Going Under
by Nightmares.When.I'm.Awake
Summary: After Annabeth breaks up with Percy, he's left broken hearted and totally obsessed with swimming. He doesn't care about school anymore, and he's guilty and he needs someone to need him or else he'll go under and drown.
1. Chapter 1

**Okay peeps, it's Nightmares again, and this is a Percy Jackson fanfiction… obviously. I think I'm pretty good at writing Percy Jackson all depressed and crap. I mean, he hangs with the son of the God of Death, he can be emo… right? **

**Percy's 17 in this, and I modified Nico's age, making him 17 but a few months younger than Percy. Bianca's alive in this story and she's like 20, Thalia's 20 also and they're roommates in college. Annabeth is 16 and she's in the same grade as Nico and Percy just younger than them because she's so smart and she broke up with Percy. Uh… let's think… Jason is 16 but a sophomore not a junior like Percy and company, Leo and Piper are dating and the same age as Jason, unlike Frank and Hazel who is Nico and Bianca's adopted sister, that couple are juniors. Nico's really protective of her also so.. Oh! I almost forgot Clarisse and Chris and Silena and Beckendorf are in college like Thalia and Bianca. Silena and Clarisse are roommates (Dear gods!) and Chris and Beckendorf are roommates. Um, Grover is some 19 year old kid who lives in Percy's apartment building with his environmentalist girlfriend Juniper, um he hangs with Nico, Rachel (Who's the same age as them) and Hazel and Frank and the Stolls and an OC named Riley who has a crush on Nico.**

**Okay, I think I covered all the bases… right?**

**Wrong… I forgot Luke. He's like an evil guy who terrorizing all of them I guess he's the son of a teacher at the college so he's always there and he's a senior friend of Octavian's who's actually Rachel's stepbrother. Um…. Yeah. And no demigod crap… they're just normal people and Percy's a swim team jock… cool right?**

**Also, I purposely did this ridiculous messed up tense thing at the end of this. I did it specifically because Percy was all screwed up in the head when this was happening. And all the rambling was totally just him being drunk on love so don't think that's how I just write normally.**

Prologue

_The waves were crashing against the shore of the beach, the sky was churning and everything inside of Percy told him today would be something to remember. He and Annabeth were sharing the cabin he usually goes to with his mother which was something incredible alone. It was perfect to him._

_She was perfect to him._

_He loved the way her blonde hair seemed brighter than ever even after he'd been in love with her for 5 years. He loved the way it curled at the ends like a princess's. He loved the way she went from "cute" to seriously beautiful. He loved her laugh, her smiles, her eyes. Yes, he especially loved her eyes. They showed every emotion she felt, and he could feel it too when he looked into those stormy orbs. When she was sad it looked like one of those depressing rains that make the outside world bleak and gray. When she was happy they were almost a translucent white that was a blinding brightness. He loved how she could beat him in every competition on this planet, except swimming, and he loved how she never mentioned how slow he still read. She was his everything. He loved her… he had since he was twelve. He loved that he could go on for this long just naming the random things he loved about her._

_He breathed her in like air too. He could be himself around her. He didn't need to pretend he was smooth and cool like he did at school. He could be his nervous, blushing self around her and she'd still love him. She had to. She had to love him because he needed her. She helped clear his mind like the water did, maybe even better._

"_I-I can't do this anymore." She says. Her princess curled hair bounced in the whipping wind. Her stormy eyes resembled the night outside, he couldn't help but notice. She was worried, tortured even._

"_Do what?" he asks, suddenly nervous, jittery._

"_I can't… lie like this. I can't tell everyone that I'm so happy like this anymore."_

"_What?"_

"_I love you, Percy… I really do," she sighs. There is a strange constricting feeling in his chest and it's getting tighter, closing in like some kind of killer tie or something, "but I- you- I… We have to break up. I don't want to say this, trust me, but you're holding me back Perce. I got early admission to Yale! Can you believe it? And I think it'd be easier if we split now." she blurts. Once she got her courage she hadn't stopped and all these words were stuck inside his skull all mixed up like alphabet soup. He can't hear anything, his heart wasn't beating, he wasn't breathing or blinking. He was there but he wasn't _there_. She didn't want him anymore, she didn't need him anymore. She had Yale, she had early admissions._

"_What?" he croaks again. His eyes are stinging and his ears are ringing and he can't function at all. His throat had long since closed all the way up, some kind of horrible fog sticking in his mouth like cotton balls, making it hard for him to speak at all._

"_Goodbye Percy. I will love you… forever. And maybe, when I graduate, we can- we can start over?" she asks. He is suddenly consumed by this horrible red… blur, this haze. This fury that was running through his veins like they were in a race._

"_No." he says, his voice sure and final. He knows, that after she leaves, after she walks away, discarding him like something she no longer needs (because that's what he is), that he will never forgive her. There will always be this horrible disgusting hole that he won't ever be able to fill all because of her. She will change and he will need his Annie and she won't be there. So no, he won't take some girl who will replace her. _

_He'd rather drown._


	2. Chapter 2

**Okay, because I explained everything on the last chapter, I'm glad I don't have to do it now because I know for sure I would've forgotten a character because it's like 11 o'clock at night where I am and I've basically been in front of screens all day. I went to the movies, I typed my blog, updated my profile, wrote like 12 statuses on Facebook, um wrote the Prologue… which you probably just read, and the chapter for one of my other fanfictions that I'll be posting once this one is done. So I'm pretty tired. Oh, and I'm watching the Dominican Republic get crushed by USA in the Olympics for basketball. I absolutely love how everyone's all excited about us being number one in basketball, but no one seems to care that we're like 18****th**** in academics (Please note my freaking sarcasm. I can practically taste it.) Anyway… read and review and on with the chapter!**

**Also, I update every other day. Just so I can take a break in the middle and write the chapters and crap.**

Chapter 1: Start (Again)

Coach Drewes shot the starting gun. Adrenaline shot through my veins making me dive into the water a split second before anyone else could react. The cool pool water was like heaven on my face, and I could feel my pores welcoming the wetness. I loved the water. I loved the way I could practically disappear in it. I loved the way it could swallow me up whole and spit me out feeling all revitalized and new. I loved how I couldn't concentrate on anything but swimming when I was in the water.

I came up for air once. I was doing the butterfly stroke, no idea how many meters I was supposed to be going. I just swam. If coach told me I was next, I was next. I got up on my post and I would swim, feel the exhilaration, and sit back down again.

That's how it's been for months. I've been living from swim meet to swim meet, basically doing nothing in between. Ever since _she_ left, I've had nothing to live for except swimming.

I finish a good 8 seconds before anyone else. I always win. I make sure of it, with hours of training. Lots of running to keep my muscles lean, breath holding contests with Nico (my best friend) and such. It's been good to have a "fresh start" as my mother says. The summer had been rough for me.

"Good job Jackson. Fine job." Coach chuckled as I sat back down, clapping me on the back. I stiffened slightly, though I doubt he noticed.

I swam two more times, and I felt disappointed when the meet was over. I guess everyone feels like that, but for me it was a little more.

I needed swimming. I needed it like had need _her_, I breathed it. I knew every famous swimmer, and not just Michael Phelps like most people did, and even the ones who weren't so famous. Anything that had to do with water I knew. Every science fair project I'd ever done had been on water, hydrodynamics, its cleanliness, all the minerals people put in it now, how it could be enhanced with electrolytes.

I was obsessed.

_Drowning_

The next day, at school, there was too much noise.

I'd pulled up in my car, a nice Mustang my mom bought me with child support money, with my sunglasses on, and stepped onto the sidewalk. I always wore sunglasses, the sun hurt my eyes and gave me the worst headaches, but it didn't even matter because everyone was chattering. The noise bounced in my skull and killed my senses making it hard to concentrate.

"-did you hear-?"

"-Joey-!"

"-Oh he is-,"

"-Where did it-?"

I kept looking around, my eyes unable to focus on something, anything, unable to grasp a single wisp of matter. I was barely hanging on to my sanity, I didn't need this.

I started walking, almost forgot to lock my car, well, I stumbled really, in this sick green and black haze. I couldn't get into shape. I needed water.

I didn't even attempt to hide my utter discomfort or pain as I entered the building. My stomach was churning and my palms were sweating and the lyrics to the song "Bixby Canyon Bridge" kept repeating in my head at the highest, most obnoxious volume possible.

"_Stop_." I groaned, resting my aching head against a cool locker door. I removed my sunglasses and instantly winced. My skull began to throb, beating ruggedly in time with something cracked and hard inside my chest.

"Percy?" I heard. The voice sounded like it was underwater. The voice was lucky. I needed to be underwater. I needed to have my pores cooled off and my molecules lost in other molecules. I needed my head to be chilled and I needed to be liquid.

"Percy?" I heard another voice. This one was so far underwater I was sure it was drowning. I wanted to save it, or really, save myself. I know, that was selfish, but who had to know, really?

Something cool and cold pressed against my neck and lips and immediately came up for air, instinctively. I blinked and snapped out of my funk.

"Shit!" I gasped. My breathing was ragged and uneven and my lungs ached so badly I could tell they wanted to burst. I concentrated on the pain instead of the embarrassment of having a weird freak out in the middle of school.

"Perce? You okay?" Rachel asked worriedly. She reminded me of my mother. They both fretted and fussed over me like I was some little kid, and they had teamed up, actually, ever since _she_ left.

"Fine." I ground out. The pain distraction was working, I didn't, couldn't, focus on the strange looks I knew people were giving us. Nico and I were pretty popular, we dominated some attention.

"I think you're lying." she muttered, probably thinking I couldn't hear her. She tossed her red locks over her shoulder and collected the curls into this weird messy bun thing on her head. She looked like she rolled out of bed and just changed her sweats for some jeans. There were paint splatters on her shirt, and words on her jeans, and holes in her shoes. She was a weirdo really, but people loved her because she was so nice and eccentric and enthusiastic. She was contagious really.

"Hey man, are you cool, really?" Nico asked quietly. He was always like that, quiet but demanding, menacing almost. His black hair was even darker than mine, like oil or something, and it stuck up in all directions like he'd just woken up. Though I knew he suffered from insomnia and didn't sleep well at all. The dark circles under his eyes were evidence, but the girls loved it. They said it made him seems incredibly "haunted and rugged".

"Yeah." I said, slightly calmer. The ugly yellow and blue lockers were coming into focus and I could actually hear my thoughts over the roar of other people talking. I finally slid my glasses all the way off and into my pocket. I waved to the few people saying hi to me through the crowd. My heart rate sped up a little, back to normal, whenever I had a "fit" my heart rate slowed dangerously, not sped up.

There was 15 minutes before school officially started so we walked into the main hallway and parked ourselves in our usual corner, waiting for Travis, Conor, Riley, Hazel and Frank.

"Hey, Jackson!" I heard. I of course knew the voice, I talked to the same people every day, I breathed their air, listened to their petty problems, and pretended to enjoy it every day.

"What's up Will?" I said automatically. I knew it was Will.

Will Solace was this totally backwards equation; he was a football player, linebacker or something, but he was nice. He wasn't obnoxious, he was pretty cool, lax, okay to talk to. He wasn't shallow, he was really into music and was even the orchestra teacher's assistant, his dad's a doctor and he always comes to all the sporting events to stand in as a "training medic" though I'm sure he knows more than the school nurse does, though he isn't deep either. He doesn't know much about the hardships of life and he doesn't have any beliefs that clash with other people's. He's normal. Normal and nice.

"Ah, nothing. I was comin' over to tell you that you did freaking amazing in the butterfly yesterday. You only came up for air once." he said, stunned. I smirked, my signature, and nodded a little.

"Thanks man." I said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Good luck today. I'd show up to the game but I've got training." I shrugged helplessly and he nodded like he understood, though he doesn't. Football is his hobby, swimming is my life. He walked away easily enough, we never really had full length conversations, and he never even gave Nico any more acknowledgement than a nod.

Nico, Rachel and I didn't speak, we just waited in a comfortable silence until we spotted Hazel and Frank walking towards us. Frank had his arms woven tightly around Hazel, who was giggling as he nuzzled her neck. I saw Nico stiffen, flexing his muscles. He was thin, and tall, kind of sinewy, but he played baseball and everyone knew he was a heck of a lot stronger than he looked. Plus, his horrible Death Glares of Doom were enough to scare off freaking Hulk Hogan himself.

"Dude, Nico's gonna rip your throat out." Rachel laughed as she hugged Hazel. The two had been best friends since they were 12, and they would only get closer. Me and Nico had known each other since we were 2 and we were probably going to know each other until we died.

"I can take him." Frank said smugly, looking over at Nico.

"'Sup Frankie." Nico said, well muttered. He was naturally quiet and he got quieter when he was uncomfortable, when there was too much attention on him.

"Hey di Angelo."

"You know Rache, I think you, me and Percy here are the only ones in the whole school who call him 'Nico' and not 'di Angelo'." Hazel mused, kissing me and Nico on the cheeks. She was like my own little sister, and had been since she was adopted at age seven.

The Stoll twins arrived like two seconds later and we basically went through the same thing over again except no one was making Nico uncomfortable so he was actually laughing, well smiling, a little at the stupid jokes the twins made. I watched all this from underwater, coming up for air every once in a while to smile or laugh or crack a joke maybe.

Riley arrived last, as usual. She and Rachel were so much alike it was ridiculous. Her, Rachel, and Hazel had been a trio since 8th grade when Riley moved here and we welcomed her into our little group with open arms. She was a tiny little blonde haired, blue eyed beauty with a shy look but a totally loud and boisterous disposition. She used to make Nico really nervous, but he got over it, and this summer I felt like he did because I'd been a freaking hermit, and she was just too much. A whole heck of a lot louder than Rachel, that's for sure.

"Hey guys! What's up all!" she chirped, giving out hugs and kisses to everyone. Nico never let anyone but Hazel and Riley give him kisses. Even his older sister, Bianca, just had to settle for hugs. They weren't as close as he and Hazel were because she'd gone to live with their uncle for a while when Nico was younger.

The bell rang just as Riley finished greeting us. Her, Rachel and Hazel flounced away quickly, and Rachel and Riley's bun things were bouncing while Hazel's curls blew in some undetectable wind.

The Stoll twins and Frank walked with Nico and I towards the lockers. I was always late to class because I went to my locker right after the bell while most people either carried all their books or went to their lockers before the bell, so the guys all kind of dispersed as I got my books for English class.

I had this class with a girl called Abby. She sat next to me. She started sitting next to me in English right after _she _left. Abby was beautiful, she could've been a model, or a Megan Foxx stunt double, but she didn't mean much to me. She was just some girl to fill a seat, not a hole. Not a hole in my chest that could be filled with all the popularity, booze, weed, Oxy, or water in the world, Abby wasn't enough for that. No one was, or ever would be. I'd always have to feel this terrible breeze through my chest each and every time I sat down because Abby was _her_ friend. Abby was all that was left.


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay so hey people. I'm trying to prewrite all of these chapters, well at least as many as possible, so I can update easier and not leave you guys hanging. But this is getting hard already because the last chapter literally took me 45 minutes to write and it was only 5 pages long! Read and review and it'll make this process less annoying and more fun!**

**Also: Grover lives in Percy's apartment building, the one he used to live in before he moved to that house. If any of you thought that was a mistake.**

Chapter 2: Flash

(Time warp. He's at home after school)

The house was dark, and quiet. Paul, my stepdad, was still at the school grading papers and stuff late and my mother was probably out talking to her agent or publisher or something. Ever since she got her book deal she's been really successfully and I am so proud of her, but she works so much and I never get to see her. And I need her the most right now.

But I guess it didn't matter, right? Because now she didn't need to marry some billionaire and my father, Poseidon, was totally irrelevant, and we didn't _need_ his child support, but we still took it, mostly for gas money. It didn't matter because we had our own big house with Greek columns out front and we had a pool out back and I had a car, my mom had a car, Paul had a car, we had 3 extra bedrooms and 2 extra bathrooms, I got to go to a fancy private school and my mom didn't have to slave to afford it.

Everything was perfect.

My parents' life was perfect. Perfect except this ridiculous little blemish that sat in their home daily, eating their food and ruining their sofa with chocolate and cereal stains.

When I saw the pool, the water glimmering and glinting in the afternoon light, my mind left the subject of my useless existence. I focused on what bliss it would be to have the hands of water choke my heart and fill that hole for a second. I would rejoice at the feeling of the water being all… deep and unknown. I'd love the way it would make me feel normal, like I wasn't some freak with this strange obsession with silence and water.

_Flashback_

_I am running. I am running with the sand stinging that cut on the bottom of my feet and the wind whipping at my skin, burning it a little. But I am laughing too because she's running even though I'll catch her. Even though no matter what she's mine and at the end of the day, I'm going to hold her. I'm going to hold her and hug her and taste her lips and feel her hips and listen to her heartbeat. At the end of the day she wants me as much as I need her and we're together and everything is perfect._

_She looks beautiful in her white strapless sundress. It's incredible actually, how she could look like a princess, a model, and a normal New York native girl all at the same time. It's amazing how she can run all sandy and barefoot in that dress and make me feel like we're living the tackiest, cliché romance movie ever, and love it. _

_She giggles, yells for me to hurry up. She sounds like an angry taxi driver and it's cute because I don't think she realizes how much New York has changed her. She's from cool laid back California and she doesn't normally sound like that._

_I catch her right as her feet touch that ultra soft, silky, and smooth sand right where the water barely reaches it. My arms wrap around her waist from behind and I pick her up into the air, swinging her around and loving the playful squeals and giggling noises she makes. I love her. Her hair is windblown and all out of whack and she wasn't wearing make up to begin with so she looks like a real girl._

_Her lips meet mine gently, giving me a caring, sweet, innocent little closed mouth kiss. It tastes like blue cookies my mom used to make and something else sweet. I laugh a little as she comes back for more but I don't have time to full out _laugh_, you know, because I want her to kiss me. I want to kiss her and lie her down in the sand and make sure we both have to shower for 25 minutes to get all the sand off._

_That's how we end up. Rolling around in the sand, her dress hiked up, my shirt off and getting soaked in the water. She hasn't seen the cabin yet, I wasn't sure then that I wanted her to see it._

_I wasn't sure I loved her._

_End Flashback_

I gasped and came up from under the insistent pressing of water reluctantly for air. I'd been under for at least 7 minutes, long enough to have an extremely painful memory of me and _her_ and it hurt. It hurt like all the molecules in my skull just decided to clench together like when you grind your teeth.

My phone was ringing.

I got out of the water, loving the way the cold bit at me as I dried.

"Hello?" I said. My voice sounded croaky and raspy form disuse. I'd barely talked all day, and I really didn't want to.

"Turn around." Nico said. It was always Nico to pull some weird shit like that, just walking into my house and stalking around me.

I turned around, of course, Nico was standing there in his all black apparel, sans the white school baseball cap, with Rachel.

"Hey." I murmured. Nico rolled his eyes and Rachel scowled at him. I didn't really want to talk to them, though I love those two like family, I wanted to just get back into the water. I wanted to drown. I wanted my lungs to be filled to the max with all that water. Maybe then I'd then someone would notice me or need me. Maybe then I'd be worth something. Because I am water and everyone needs it, right?

"'Sup?" Nico muttered. He was frowning, though he always is, this frown was different. This frown was on purpose, he was actually… disappointed?

"S'wrong?"

"Let's go inside. It's freaking frigid out here." he suggested quickly I could tell he really was cold though, because he had goosebumps and his teeth were chattering.

Rachel hadn't said a word and that was strange, but I really couldn't care. The noise of them breathing and walking and talking was this disgusting roar that was washing over my senses and I just couldn't take it because I wanted to swallow all the water in the world and I never would if they were bothering me.

I wanted take in something they needed.

"What'd you come over for? I was h-,"

"Holding your breath?" Nico sneered. I rolled my eyes and towled my hair dry. I hated this feeling. That downer right after the euphoria of water filling me up.

The two of them followed me into the kitchen where I grabbed a cup and looked in the cabinets for a good scotch. I poured it, mixed it with a little juice, and took the little white pill I had laid out for myself. It wasn't prescribed, from a doctor, but I prescribed it to myself. It helped me sleep and made me want to stay in the dark forever and freeze time a little.

Rachel looked at the cup in disgust, but said nothing, and Nico looked like he wanted a cup for himself. I took a swig and then swallowed it down, my face pinching up from the burn.

"You don't want to hang out?" Rachel asked, and I could hear the disappointment seeping into her words as she spoke. It broke my heart it half because I knew it was my fault, but I didn't know what to do.

"We could, I mean-I have- sure I guess." I stammered, and I felt my cheeks getting warmer and warmer. I didn't like the way Nico was staring at me, I didn't like the way my skin felt dry and tight and I hated the taste in my mouth, the feeling in my stomach.

"Cool, go take a shower or something, and put on something nice." Rachel said with a squeal. I was happy, or at least satisfied to see her happy. I was glad she wasn't sitting around biting her lip of and growing gray hair way too many years early because of me.

Nico walked into the living room, making himself at home, like always, and turning to ESPN. He doesn't really seem like the sporty type. He seems like he'd sit around and write poetry and stuff, but he doesn't. I wish I could be like Nico sometimes. I wish I could be me without a care, and say what I want and not need to make people feel better.

The shower was too hot. It scorched my skin and stung my eyes but I liked it because it was water. I couldn't help but notice I was taking way too long, but since we'd moved into this swanky neighborhood it wasn't like we would run out of hot water or anything. I hated this place really. I'd liked living in our cluttered little apartment with my mom and Paul and never knowing where anything was. I liked it, the memory of it because it was before Annabeth. It was before she dumped me, and left all these broken, trashy pieces that couldn't fit anywhere except in the water where everything fits.

For some strange reason, I think Nico had picked my clothes out and not Rachel. The two had gotten into the habit of making me shower and picking my clothes for the day during the summer because my mom never could and Paul didn't want to and all I wanted was to swim so clothes were stupid to me. I just needed swimming trunks and I was good.

The reason I think Nico had chosen what I wore was because, it was short sleeved. Rachel always let me wear shirts that at least came to my elbows. I don't know why, because she had to have known that it would look a little suspicious, but she did it anyway.

Nico had been paying attention.

Because, they were shallow. The small little cuts crisscrossing on my wrist. You could barely see them, they weren't really even there if you didn't care. If you didn't know me you wouldn't see them, you wouldn't see the way I always rubbed at them when I was sitting in class. If you weren't Nico you wouldn't see how dead my eyes were and you wouldn't see how much I needed water and you wouldn't know to bring me a bottle every morning. And if you weren't Nico you sure as hell wouldn't know that I'd freak it I had to wear short sleeves.

"Can I change shirts?" I called down the stairs. I was wearing the jeans and I'd sprayed the weird body spray on myself that Rachel said was "yummy".

"Why?" Rachel whined.

"I don't like it. It's too…"

"Nico?" she suggested. I laughed a little at that and nodded like she could see me.

"Well I did buy it." I heard him grumble softly. There was a twinge of smugness in his voice as he said it, like he knew on the inside I was dry as a desert and dying from thirst because I was panicking and I couldn't breathe or stop thinking or rambling to myself, and good gods I needed water!

"Could you bring me some w-water?" I stammered a little. I knew Nico had just rolled his and- and Rachel had grimaced, but nodded anyway and went to get a glass from the cabinet.

I heard the filter running and the ice maker shaking and I nearly died with happiness.

She walked up the stairs with the glass in one hand a different shirt in the other. It was black (probably a present from Nico) and it went to my elbows like I liked them. Great.

"Thanks Rache. You're the best." I sighed and chugged the water before slipping the shirt on. She rolled her eyes and tugged on my hand.

"Got your wallet? We're going out. But I gotta go home and change first, you know, because when we do go out I don't want everyone there to see me in these ratty jeans and stuff. And I called Riley over to do my hair. I guess you and Neeks can play Xbox or something, Octavion **(I wonder who's made Octavion Rachel's stepbrother before!)** barely plays anymore," she started babbling as she lugged me down the stairs. Nico was still watching ESPN, but he was muttering angrily under his breath about wanting to rip some guy's _spleen_ out and shoving it down his freaking throat. That was his equivalent to yelling.

Rachel was still prattling on and Nico had turned off the T.V to grab his car keys. He drove this huge truck and he purposely played the loudest most obnoxious music on earth just to annoy his stepmom Persephone, a florist who works downtown. She's all about peace and quiet so she irks the heck out of him. His mother, Maria, had introduced him to different music, and Hades, his dad, got him in metal, but stopped playing it around the house when Persephone moved in.

We drove to Rachel's house listening to Marilynn Manson and Nico sang along animatedly the whole time, even smiling a little bit when the song _Lunchbox_ came on. It had practically been his theme song last school year.

Rachel lived in the kind of house I used to want when we lived in our shoebox apartment. It was two stories, a light blue color and wide with a white wrap around porch. She had a porch swing in front and in back there was a huge glass table and chairs that looked good with her dad's chrome grill. During the summer they always cooked out and laughed and it used to make me feel like I was in a movie. Her house was always a little cluttered too, in her dining room her mother always had pottery lying out and in their "formal living room" there was one of Rachel's huge paintings and one of her sculptures where everyone always hung their coats, and in their actual family room there were newspapers, and two dog beds, and shoes and iPods lying around. But the best part: Huge 96 inch flat screen T.V!

"I'll see ya in a bit, Rache, I'm gonna go kill some dudes." Nico muttered, walking in a trance towards the T.V. I ground out some excuse too and went to go set up the Xbox.

It felt good to be normal.


	4. Chapter 4

**Okay, so now I am writing this chapter it's going to be about where the guys go out. Um… and I'm going to add a little surprise towards the end of the chapter, so this one will be longer than most. And again, I'm going to try to update every other day, or maybe every three days because I don't want to finish this fanfiction in like, three weeks. That would suck.**

**As a matter of fact, yeah, I'm gonna change my schedule. Every three days, I'll update, depending on the length. If it's longer than 5 pages, then it'll be every 4 days. That way I can continue this even during the school year, and what not.**

**Another announcement: I'll be collaborating with **iAmtheRebel16** on her story ****Until We Bleed****, she said she started it once before and then she deleted it. So… yeah check her out too. She mostly does one shots for Percy Jackson and she hasn't updated her Maximum Ride in forever, but she's good. But I won't be working on it until this winds down a little. Right now we're working on plot, character development and just tossing thins back and forth.**

**On with the chapter!**

Chapter 3: Play

Riley arrived at Rachel's house right in the middle of a game. She got me killed, twice, and then she bounded up the stairs with something called a "crimper" to go burn the hell out of Rachel's head. I guess girls like that crap because all I heard for like 5 minutes was them squealing about how much fun this was going to be.

**(My brother is saying these exact words!)**

"What the fuck Tanner? Get the hell up and stop being a pussy! You can't keep campin' out and shit, you get no freaking kills you dumbass!" Nico shouted through the mic. We were playing on Live with our friend Tanner, who is a real good sniper, and Nico hates that.

"I've got more kills than you!" Tanner snapped. You see what Modern Warfare 3 does to us teenagers? It's just not healthy.

"Shut the fuck up and kill someone you jackass!"

"Ok." Tanner said, and shot some guy in the head. Nico was silent for a few moments before rolling his eyes and not talking to Tanner anymore.

"Nico, stop yelling! Her parents will hear you." Hazel laughed as she barged through the door. Rachel had given Hazel a key about a year ago and ever since then she is forever just walking in. After a fight with her boyfriend: Rachel's house. After a fight with Persephone: Rachel's house. After hanging out with Bianca for hours: Rachel's house. After using all the gas in Nico's truck without telling him she was going to borrow it in the first place: Rachel's house. (As fast as possible).

"They aren't even here." he sighed, and then, "Suck it bitch." he laughed, knifing someone.

"It's still rude." she muttered and dashed up the stairs.

About 40 minutes later, Rachel, Riley and Hazel all came down the stairs smelling all fresh and clean and looking like they were going out to a club or something.

Nico's eyes grew wide when he saw them, and he focused single mindedly on Hazel, who was wearing destroyed black skinny jeans that looked like they'd been painted onto her body, and this weird chain top thing. Her hair was straightened, for once, and it flowed to her shoulder blades all shiny and black. And she wore some make up. It was incredible.

"What the hell?" Nico whispered. I hated to say it myself, but she looked amazing, to a point where I feared for Frank's life if he was going to be with her and Nico in the same place.

"You like it?" she squealed and spun around for her to see. She had on these 4 inch high death trap booth heels that looked like they killed to walk in.

"No. You cannot where that! You have to go and change, Hazel!" he sighed, exasperated.

"But, Nico!" she whined and I laughed a little at her face expression. She looked like he'd just tried to shoot her puppy.

"Don't listen to him Haze, you look great." I chuckled, and Nico scowled at me. I laughed again, not being able to control it, and Hazel shot me a smile.

Just like old times.

Rachel looked like some kind of fire goddess with her hair was clipped up in this sloppy but pretty way and the strands that were left down were kind of wavy or whatever. I assumed this "crimper" contraption had done that. And she was wearing this smoky gray shirt over a black skirt. The illusion was totally ruined when I saw she was wearing these muddy red Chuck's with it.

And Nico couldn't take his eyes off Riley. After he got over the initial shock of seeing Hazel all dressed up like some college girl, he decided that Riley was the hottest thing since sliced bread. Her blonde hair was all coiled up in these perfectly bouncy curls and her flouncy lace shirt was obviously from Rachel's closet, along with her white capris.

They had all turned into freaking chicks.

It was so weird, seeing these three girls who were basically my sisters looking like this. I wonder how Nico had done this his whole life.

Now I feel like a girl myself for even describing how the girls looked, I mean, c'mon, how much weirder can I get?

So, because Nico and I were both feeling uncomfortable and unmanly, we decided to all pile into Nico and Riley's car, but only Hazel rode with her because she drove this weird mini roadster thing that was super tiny. And foreign.

We drove through the Stoll's neighborhood, to pick them up, and as soon as they got in the car I immediately felt annoyed because they were bickering over something ridiculous, a shirt I think. Riley had Frank in the car with her, obviously, and we all drove to the other end of town.

I got all nervous, being so far away from my pool and my house and because I left that cup of liquor on the counter where my mom could see it. Not that she'd do anything about it, but the idea unnerved me.

Nico stopped in front of the huge building that probably covered a good acre, completed with neon lights and signs and music. It looked like something from a Vegas movie, but it was right there in front of us.

"What are we doing here?" I asked warily. I tried to keep my voice from shaking, and if you weren't Nico, you would've thought I was just really excited.

"We're here to eat. What did you think retard?." He said, and I laughed.

This was like before Annabeth. When I could talk to Nico without him searching my face for some sign of insanity. Before when Nico would sit outside of a club with me and rate the skanky girls walking out of them, those good old days before the Annabeth incident totally ruined everything and now those days are memories and the days I'm living now won't even count as days because they're just minutes. Minutes and hours and seconds that I drowned in alcohol, and water. Minutes and hours and seconds that I shot through the chest with paper clips, and razors and scissors too.

But this was now and for once I could play, and be normal, and feel like I did before everything fell to shit and my sanity was shot too.

_Nico's P.O.V_

_Percy was acting different. But of course when he's not acting like some freaky swimming obsessed, suicidal weirdo he's acting like the old Percy we all know and love. So, it's a good thing he's acting different. In fact, it's freaking amazing and I wish we could do stuff like this all the time. I wish we could bring Percy out of that weird shell made of water and all the crazy shit he fills his own head with because when we do the sun comes out and it stops raining in Percyland, and everyone's happy._

_Right now, we're sitting in the Lux at this huge table filled to the max with every type of food you could think of. I think between Travis and Conor we ordered like $100 worth of food. _

_Everyone was laughing and talking and a few times I saw Riley flip her blonde hair over her shoulder and her pretty blue eyes travel to her wrist for a hair band like she wanted to tie it up. She licked her full pink lips at least 7 times as our waiter sat her plate of piping hot pasta crap in front of her. Of course, I couldn't laugh because, though the sight of her right then and there was absolutely perfect, that bitch ass waiter was freaking ogling her tiny little figure in her outfit and I wanted to punch the living shit out of him for it. I could practically feel the freaking anger lighting my face up, making me blush._

"_You cool Neeks?" Percy said, turning to me. His face was clouded with worry and I hated that I'd made him stop laughing, I'd made him go quiet again because he was worried about me. This was all for him. This whole, spending $300 on food on a flipping Monday afternoon was all for Percy Jackson because he was like my brother. He had been there since birth for me, through my mom's death, through Bianca leaving to go and live with Pluto and Proserpine, through my dad marrying Persephone, he'd been there when I went all bonkers about studying and he got me into baseball._

_Okay, that waiter is really asking for it._

_Anyway: and I'm going to be there for Percy. I know that doesn't sound like the awesomeness that is Nico di Angelo, but it's true. I'm going to be the one to help him get over his weird water obsession and his dependency on alcohol, and I'm going to be the one to find out if he's cutting himself. I mean, it'd be hard to do for him because he spends half of his life either passed out from being drunk or half naked. So._

_And because I'm Nico di Angelo I'm going to kick the ass of the next guy to come in here and flirt with my fucking sister because it's really starting irk me. Like, seriously, do you guys not effing see her flacking boyfriend sitting right next to her? Or maybe they don't see me sitting over here fuming. I bet Rachel is just watching the steam come from my ears._

"_Um, 'scuse me, waiter?" I said pointedly. Time to have some fun. For some reason, I totally love irritating the hell out of people. I find it hilarious._

"_Yes, sir?" the kid said. He was tall and lanky and he had this ugly duck tail in his oily brown hair. I guess girls found him cute because not only was Riley totally swooning at the sight of him, but he had Rachel staring after him too._

"_Can you do me a really important favor?" _

"_Um…"_

"_Sure you can!" I said with fake enthusiasm. Percy was looking at me like he knew where I was going with this, Hazel looked absolutely mortified, Riley looked confused, Rachel was shaking her head and looking down at her food, and the twins looked like they could wait for what I was about to pull. _

"_Um… okay?"_

"_Good, good. First, I need you to stop staring at my sister's," I gestured flamboyantly to Hazel, "tits. Second, I'd also really, really like it if you stopped lingering over by my friend," I looked over at Riley, "because it's beginning to creep me out. Third, stop coming over here like we're gonna burn the place down. If we'd wanted to, it would be done already. Trust me. And lastly," I inhaled dramatically, "can I get a refill?" I asked honestly. The wine they served was awesome, and I wasn't supposed to be drinking it but the _girl_ who'd come with it didn't card me. She must've thought I had been flirting with her._

"_Are-are you old enough to be dr-drinking?" he stammered, still in shock. He was blushing like mad, like Riley was, and Conor high fived me under the table, whispering "Nice, man" making my lips twitch a little._

"_Do you really want me to get a manager? Just gimmie my refill." I said nonchalantly. He nodded quickly, and hurried off towards the kitchen._

_Percy exploded with laughter._

"_Holy shit man! What was that? I'm sorry, but did anyone see how serious he was, and did you guys see the kid's face? He was about to crap his pants!" he laughed loudly, earning some looks from a few adults around us._

"_What?" Hazel snapped at a man sitting a little to her left. He looked frightened for a second before turning around to his food, "That's what I thought."_

_Well, what can I say? We children of Hades have quite the temper._

"_I know right! I thought he was literally about to run away crying." Rachel laughed._

"_What the hell did you do to the kid? He was stuttering and fidgeting like mad." Travis asked. I just leaned back in my chair, letting the praise flow over me._

_Yeah. I'm a boss._

"_It was one of his Death Glares of Doom." Percy stated simply, and I couldn't help but laugh. He hadn't called one of my scowls a "Death Glare of Doom" in like, 4 months. I was starting to think I'd never hear his 5 year old explanation again._

"_Yeah, they're scary. I get 'em enough." Frank muttered. Hazel blushed furiously._

_We spent the rest of the night laughing about my little show, and I got pretty tipsy after a while. I hated myself for doing it right in front of Percy, but then again, it could be like a taste of his own medicine. _

_After another hour, we decided to leave, Riley complaining about being too full to drive, Hazel whining about how embarrassing I am, you know, the usual._

_But what was unusual, was Percy volunteering to drive for me, and _Travis_ volunteering to drive for Riley._

"_We have to do this more often! That was amazing. We should invite Jason and Thalia and all of them!" Riley said excitedly. I saw Percy's eyes flash with an idea._

"_My dad! He owns that restaurant Olympus with my Uncle Zeus." Percy gasped, "He could totally get us in. He doesn't do shit for me anyway." Riley's eyes widened happily._

"_Isn't that place uber swanky?" she said._

"_Yeah?" Percy grimaced._

"_Dude, I'm calling my cousin Silena! She could help us all with make up and clothes. And we could get Jason, Leo, Piper, Thalia, and even Bianca!" she squealed._

"_Silena and Beckondorf can come too. Oh, and Clarisse and Chris." Percy shrugged. I tried not to let it show, but on the inside I was absolutely ecstatic. He was making plans and talking to everyone and laughing and cursing in fancy food joints._

_This was good._

**(That was the surprise! Nico's point of view. It was fun to write so I'll probably do it more.)**

Percy P.O.V

It was fun. Sitting in that restaurant with all my friends, joking and laughing. Watching Nico make a fool out of someone who wasn't as confident and cool as him, just like it used to be.

But it was painful. It hurt to feel my skin so dry after I'd felt the water on my skin. It was hard to not be talking about swimming and watching Nico get drunk, it was hard walking into his house with him and telling my mom I was sleeping over his place on a Monday night and it was hard for me when an hour later she hadn't texted back, it was hard listening to Persephone chew Nico out for being tipsy on a school night. It was hard to know that she cared and my mom didn't and it was hard to know that Nico didn't need swimming or water or baseball or alcohol to make him feel better. It wasn't his medicine, it was just something that made him laugh or it was something that he did because it was fun.

He was normal, he was Nico and he had been since he was born and I was Percy Jackson but 4 months ago I had been _Percy _freaking _Jackson_ and now he was gone and I wasn't sure if he was coming back.

"So what should we wear to Olympus?" Nico asked me. I was lying on the futon in his bedroom and he was lying in his huge water bed. His room was a loft, because he hated being near his parents and because Bianca had already claimed the basement. So of course, in those rooms near their parents was Hazel, stuck in the only bedroom used since Persephone moved in. Nico claimed it was alright because they lived in a freaking mansion, called _Manor of the Angels_, and it was alright because their father's a diamond salesmen so she was always showered with gifts and expensive earrings and necklaces and Gucci jeans and she had a car, so she was rarely ever really around them. Nico was a shut in, didn't like leaving the house, so he claims he had no choice.

"Dress shirt, tie." I mumbled, and Nico nodded.

"Are you okay?" he said suddenly.

"No, I mean, why do stay up here. You just left Hazel with the 'rents like it didn't matter." His eyes widened a little around the edges but other than that he looked totally impassive.

"What?" his voice cracked a little.

"Why'd you leave her down there? You know she hates your stepmom as much as you do." I shrugged, like it didn't matter, but I knew that it did because I knew Nico like the back of my hand.

"I uh, heard them talking once, well no, I heard Persephone talking at my dad. Telling him that I was such a "disrespectful little brat" and that she didn't want me around her. She said that I should go to boarding school." He shrugged and we didn't look at each other for a second.

"Um."

"Nah, it's cool. She loves Hazel, she adores her, worships the fucking ground she walks on. I think it's because she's not- not um, Maria's kid." He stammered.

Suddenly he stood up and whipped his shirt off. I couldn't help but notice that he had a 6 pack coming in, which was strange because he'd always been on the small side. His hip bones protruded out of his skin and I sat there, awkwardly staring.

What the hell was happening to me?


	5. Chapter 5

**I just want to let everyone know, that this isn't a yaoi story. Percy's just off of his freaking head right now and he's really, really confused, so bear with me, the story gets better. You'll get a peek inside of Annabeth's mind too, sooner or later, and I'll even show you Percy Jackson in an alcohol induced haze of madness.**

**Um… yeah.**

Chapter 4: Think!

I don't remember when the heck it started. This weird thing. I'd had another meet on Wednesday, but I couldn't concentrate because Nico was there. He and Rachel were screaming their butts off and he was making me nervous so I only did 2 swims, giving coach this bogus excuse about me having a real bad headache. He knew enough to sit me out. The last time I'd had to swim during a headache I passed out and almost drowned.

So I was sitting on the bench, pretending to nurse my head after swimming, and only winning by 4 seconds. I was trying to beat my record of 8 seconds but it wasn't going to happen when I couldn't think.

Once the meet was over, I sat in the locker room after showering and getting dressed, with my head between my knees. I hadn't known that Rachel and Nico would show up, so I'd driven alone. Good thing, because if I didn't I'd be forced to breathe in the scent of Nico for 10 minutes.

You may think it happened on Monday, but it didn't. It started before that I know. It had to because if it didn't, I would feel it so intensely. I wouldn't be so afraid of being in his presence and I wouldn't be nervous when I was.

"Hey Percy, di Angelo's waiting outside for ya, said he didn't wanna leave some Rachel chick alone." A guy called Raymond said. I nodded at him and grabbed my hoodie, slipping into it before I walked out of the locker room.

"What's up Neeks. Didn't know you'd be around." I said, trying to plant a smile on my face. It was harder than it sounds. He looked me up and down suspiciously, like he thought I might have drugs on me or something (I didn't, for your information).

"Well, you know… Bianca's in town. Said she wanted to "ogle her favorite brother's super hot best friend" and I couldn't object to that." He shrugged, nonchalantly. It was weird, to think Bianca had actually said that, though I knew it was probably true. She was forever staring at me, especially when I was shirtless.

"I believe you. Where is she?" I laughed, avoiding Nico's eyes on purpose. He looked like he was just as uncomfortable as me.

"Pulling her car around. Rachel's riding with her." I nodded, and an awkward silence ensued, making Rachel look back and forth between us like we'd just simultaneously grown two new heads.

"What the hell is going on with you two?" she asked loudly. A few guys from the team looked over at us and I frowned at her before looking over at Nico for help, but I looked away quickly because I couldn't take his scrutiny.

"Nothing." We said shortly, at the same time.

"Something." she insisted, wiggling her eyebrows at us.

"Nothing, honest Rache." Nico rolled his eyes and started walking towards the door. I couldn't help myself, I started staring at the way his shoulder blade protruded from his back, and those little lumps from his spine.

Nico is different. He's more strange and odd than any of the "deep bad boys" you could find at your school. He's this totally different breed that had never been discovered. He loved music, he liked painting but he was a jock and he flirted with girls to get what he wanted. He smoked weed for fun, and he got tipsy on school nights, but he loved his sisters and he'd do absolutely anything for them. He hated his stepmom, lost all respect for his father, but he wasn't broken. He was cocky and sarcastic and probably the hardest partying person I'd ever met. I mean, before the whole Annabeth Incident, he used to go Project X on a regular basis. But then again, he hated leaving his house and talking to people. He was rich but he rocked his old beat up Chuck Taylor's, in every classic color, high tops. He played guitar, not to get girls but because his mom thought it was cool. He was into "older women" and totally went to book club on Saturdays sometimes for the sole purpose of talking to the receptionist at the library, Linda. He was a raving insomniac, and practically a lunatic when he hadn't had any good sleep in a few weeks. I'd been noticing that about him for a while. For a few weeks actually. I'd noticed the way he hated when attention was all directed at him, but he purposely pulled stunts to embarrass other people in public, and then he'd laugh about it. I'd noticed how his eyes would darken when anyone mentioned his mother or Persephone in the same paragraph, I'd noticed how he was staring at Riley more and more, and how she was staring at him less and less, (but when she did it was for literally like 10 minutes) I'd noticed how he had this little wrinkle in between his eyebrows when he did batting practice. I noticed his laugh more, I noticed his clothes, his bones, I noticed everything now and on Monday it had begun to freak me out.

You see? Guys aren't supposed to do that!

So I didn't talk to Nico as we walked. I avoided looking into his eyes, and I tried not to wonder about how he was so thin, so small and how the heck he could be so massively strong and scary.

"What's with you Perce? You keep starin' at me like I've finally gone off my head or something." Nico said suddenly. We were right in front of his car, and I didn't know why the hell I'd gone with him when we could've just gone separate ways at the exit of the school building. I found myself staring at his lips as he spoke.

Suddenly, I realized that I needed something and it wasn't water. It wasn't water or Annabeth or narcotics or alcohol, it was Nico and the whole idea of that was so disturbing that I wanted to cry. I wanted to get rid of this terrible ache in my chest that was throbbing with each pulse. I wanted to stab myself through the chest and rip this pain out because I didn't want Nico like that, but my brain couldn't tell because all my brain knew was that my chest was aching for Nico, and he smelt like death and cologne and booze and cigarettes, and I knew he smoked, but only when stressed and I couldn't think straight.

His lips were so full.

_Drowning_

I'd run away from Nico. I'd stared at his lips for a full minute and a half and decided that I was done being so ridiculously weird and I ran away like a wimp to my car and sped to my house. I didn't expect Nico to follow me and he didn't, and I was disappointed. Not because he didn't follow me but because I didn't see Bianca. Well, that's what I kept telling myself as I sat in my bed staring at the wall. I was hoping my phone would ring for some reason, though I'm not sure who I wanted to call.

I didn't go to school the next day. The feeling in my stomach was so painful that I needed something to numb it and I ended up sitting in front of my flat screen with a glass of straight vodka, no cranberry juice, and two OxyContin. It wasn't a healthy combination but I liked the cool blue haze that pulled me under and sucked all the life out of my chest. I liked the way I could feel those cold black tendrils squeezing my heart until each breath throbbed, but the throb was like blinking. It was normal and welcome and I liked it. I loved it.

That was just me in the morning. I sat on the couch not even pretending to watch T.V, not arguing with Paul when he asked me why I wasn't going to school, and enjoyed my screwed up funk for hours. This was even more consuming than the water. This ate me up faster and took longer to spit me out.

By the time I would've been at lunch I was drunk and the OxyContin hadn't worn off yet so I was satisfied. I could hear every heartbeat, and every breath tasted like cotton candy and I wanted to let it melt on my tongue and watch it turn colors. Light to dark. I wanted to smoke a joint too, but Nico wasn't a around and he had all the connections. Not that I'd talk to him anyway.

By the time school should've been over I was blasting The Temper Trap to a point where my ears ached but I just drowned the pain. I drowned it away with vodka and gin and scotch and Jose Quervo. It all burned my throat but it got rid of thoughts of Annabeth with her princess hair, it got rid of Nico with his jutting hip bones and protruding spine, it got rid of my mom not caring anymore, it got rid of fucking Paul trying to help me, it got rid of teachers, it got rid of girls coming on to me, it got rid of it all, and I was glad because it hurt too much. I'd take the stinging in my throat any day. I'd welcome it with open arms.

When Paul walked in the house, my throat was hoarse from belting out lyrics and my hand was bleeding. I don't know why, all I know is that I was clutching a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer because I'd needed to cut a thread.

"Percy! What the fuck?" he'd screamed, but he was a thousand miles away and I couldn't hear him. Well I could but my ears were broken anyway, all I heard were these horrible words. These lies from some girl with blonde curls saying that she loved me. All I heard were the lies from some skinny anorexic looking guy with black hair saying I'd be fine. All I were the lies that fell from the mouth of a fire goddess who said that she would help me. All I heard were the lies that had opened this crater in my chest that wouldn't let me rest and haunted me in my sleep.

All I heard was my own mind taunting me.

I stumbled away from the voice of Paul and locked myself in the basement. There was a pool table and a Wii, and an Xbox 360, with Kinect, and there was a PlayStation 3 and there were tons and tons of games and there was a huge flat screen, almost as big as the one the Dares had in their living room. It wasn't enough though. It wasn't enough to distract me from the fact that my mother didn't have time for me, my father never wanted me, my friends thought I was insane, I was a raging freaking alcoholic and I couldn't get over some random bitch who tossed my fucking heart like it was old, moldy ass lasagna.

I was mad.

I had all these insane conflicting emotions welling inside of me, I hurled my glass of tequila across the room, smashing it on the wall, watching the liquid flow down. I liked the way it dripping and leaked, and I liked the glass stuck in the drywall.

I passed out down there.

The next morning, on Friday, when I woke up my head was pounding and my throat was dry, and my stomach ached and all I wanted was a smoke, a shot, and a super Aspirin.

I heaved myself off of the ground and made my way up to the kitchen. The clock read 12:11 pm and I though no one was home.

"Percy!" my mom shouted. Her voice was shrill and high and full of worry as she threw herself at me, trying to get a hug. Oh, I get it.

"Now you notice?" I growled softly, pushing her away from me. For some reason she didn't seem like the beautiful brown haired blue eyed mother that I had so worshipped when I was 12. She seemed like this sellout, this trader who totally discarded me when she found something else more time consuming. Something more interesting. Something that was actually worth concentrating on.

"Notice what sweetie?" she asked, tears in her eyes. She looked like she had something really important to say and at any other time I would've listened but I was flying in a blind rage.

"That I needed you! Four months ago, I literally lied on the couch for 32 hours and you didn't say anything. Not a GOD DAMN THING!" I shouted. She shrank away from me and I liked it because I didn't need her close.

I thought.

"Percy I-," she began, and I snorted.

"Go to work mom. Leave me alone, like you did when all I needed was to be around you." I sighed, feeling the high of anger wear off. She ran out of the room.

I thought about the way everything had turned out. I even thought about the guy I'd left behind, called Grover in my old apartment building because I thought this life would be something special.

I was still thinking when I called my dad.

"Hello?" he answered. His voice was deep and rumbly and I would bet he was as confused as I was.

"Poseidon?" I started.

"Yes, this is him speaking. May I ask who's calling?"

"It's you _son_ Percy Jackson. I was wondering, could I get a really big reservation at Olympus tonight at 8 o'clock? I wanna bring some friends." I said bluntly. I could tell he was probably widening his eyes and looking surprised and shit.

"Percy?"

"Yes. So, can I get the reservations or what? I need to get outta this fucking house." I sighed, annoyed.

"Um, yes. How many?" Well, there's:

Me, Nico, Hazel, Frank, Riley, Rachel, Travis, Conor Bianca, Thalia, Jason, Piper, Leo, Clarisse, Chris, Silena, and Beckondorf.

"Eighteen."

"Um, do you-?"

"I was hoping it'd be on the house. Subtract the amount from your child support check or something. I'll be an adult soon anyway."

"Um… yes, yes of course." He murmured.

"Thanks." I muttered and hung up.

I took another glass of scotch and headed back downstairs.


	6. Chapter 6

**Don't worry kids, Percy's gonna get his crap together. After he meets Luke and gets over his slight guy crush on Nico. I don't really know where I'm going with that, actually, but I do know he'll be over it pretty soon.**

**On with the chapter.**

Chapter 5: Angry

Dinner with my friends was great. I left my house, and left my drunken stupor back at my house. Everyone assumed I'd been with my mother, because that's what I told them.

"Hey Percy." Bianca whispered to me seductively. I'd offered to give her, Thalia and Jason a ride in my car. Nico had the twins, Piper and Leo, so his car was filled to the max. Riley had Hazel, Frank, and Clarisse, while Beckondorf decided to drive himself, Silena and Chris.

We got to Olympus and I must, we all did clean up well. The valet guys nearly fainted when we all pulled up and I laughed, just telling them that I was Poseidon's son and I was having a party. They let us in immediately.

I could not take my eyes off of Bianca. Her hair was dark, like Nico's but she had a few russet brown natural highlights in them, and her eyes were spotted with little flecks of gold. She had on a velvet colored dress with a deep red color, it looked like earth rocks not blood, lipstick. Her hair was pulled up on top of her head in a clip thing and she was wearing diamonds, from her father. She looked like a model.

Nico and I hadn't actually talked since Wednesday, but I could tell he was pissed about me staring at his sister. He looked really odd, wearing black dress pants, a black dress shirt and a blood red tie. He announced to us all that his father had picked it out.

Riley looked fantastic also, and Nico would momentarily stop staring at me staring at his sister to stare at her. She was wearing this professional knee length light pink dress that matched the every present blush on her face so perfectly, I think she did it on purpose. It had ruffles at the bottom and a black belt thing at the waist, her hair was just in a simple high ponytail, and I took all this in, along with how hot her legs looked in those red bottom heels, at the same time as Nico.

I ordered a glass of champagne at the same time he ordered a glass of wine.

We scowled at each other for a moment, but I couldn't hold mine up due to the fact that his lips looked so full and red from him chewing on them. I was disgusting, I was disgusted, and so I looked away.

"This is so cool Percy!" Riley squealed from the end of the table. She looked like a kid in a candy store and I couldn't help but smile at her.

"It really is." I muttered, looking around. I hadn't been in Olympus since I was 13 and at that time it had just stared out, it wasn't nearly as fancy as it is now.

"Yeah, Perce. This is totally _swank_." Hazel smiled at me. Travis and Conor nodded in agreement and I loved their praise, it felt good on my skin.

Nico didn't say anything, even after I'd had this totally weird conversation with Jason. It was weird because it was more like the playful banter I used to have with Nico, before Annabeth, before these weird ass feelings he was giving me in my chest.

"Jackson, I can't believe your dad let us all here for free!" Jason had sighed. The waitress bringing his food was curvy, tan and nothing but legs. Her blonde hair fell down her back in waves and her green eyes sparkled like a cat's. But Jason wasn't paying attention, he was looking at me like I was this almighty hero or something, kind of like I used to look at Nico, when he told me that Annabeth wasn't worth a goddamn thing. Bianca caught me staring and I hear her growl.

"Me either. Son of a bitch has a conscience I guess." I shrugged and he laughed. He laughed and I hated the way it sounded because he sounded like a wannabe. Wannabe who, I'll never know, but a poser nonetheless.

"He probably grew one after your mom got her deal and married Paul."

"I bet. I should go kick him in the balls, huh?" everyone laughed except Nico and the fact that he didn't find it funny only alerted me to the act that he though he needed to worry because he just scowled at him fruit in front of him. I have no idea what the hell he was eating, but it had pomegranates in it. I don't think anyone found it as ironic as I did that he was eating pomegranates when his father's name was Hades.

"Hey Neeks," I started. His head turned really slowly towards me. I'm guessing he had been threatening Frank or something because he was red in face and Frank looked sick.

"Yeah?"

"Don't you find your choice of fruit… ironic?" I said, with a small smirk. He looked down at his bowl, and I saw his lips twitch a little at the edges before he rolled his eyes.

"Nice Perce. That's something I've never hear before. You do realize that pomegranate is my favorite fruit on this planet, right?"

"Are you implying that you've had fruit from other planets?"

"As a matter of fact, I am. I've had fruit from Pluto."

"That's not a planet anymore. And I've had fruit from Neptune."

"I've had fruits from Jupiter!" Thalia and Jason said at exactly the same time, both of them started giggling hysterically.

"Me and Silena had fruit from Venus." Riley chimed.

"Me too!" Piper said.

"Mine came from Mars." Clarisse and Frank grunted together. It was actually funny.

Eventually, as everyone stopped shouting out where the heck their fruit came from, my Uncle Zeus came around our table.

"I take it you're all enjoying yourselves." he asked politely. He had a fading English accent, like my father, but instead of jet black hair his was a chestnut brown and graying at his temples. He was a few years younger than my father, who claimed Zeus purposely dyed his hair a little gray to seem "wise", actually the baby of their family. It was my father, my Aunt Hera, and Aunt Hestia. I had a lot of cousins from him, he always said he wanted a big family. He had 8 kids in all, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, Ares, Apollo and Artemis (who are twins) and Athena, who all their own kids who were all around the ages of 10 or 11.

"Yeah. This is great Zeus." Nico said. He was probably closer to my family than I was, which was strange, but then again, Hades and I got on pretty well, and I had absolutely loved his mother Maria like she was my cool older sister.

"Glad you're enjoying yourself Nico. Care to introduce me to your friends?" he suggested, gesturing widely to our whole table and only really speaking to Nico, but glancing in my general direction.

"Yeah, sure. Perce?" Nico looked up at me, his skin was pale and he had this crooked grin on his face. His shirt was a scary contrast to his skin and I wished I had worn something cool like him, my white shirt and blue tie were generic, generic and plain and always around and becoming dull and boring and I wanted to rip it all off as I thought about it.

"Um, Uncle Zeus, this is Travis and Conor Stoll, Riley Champion, um, Jason and Thalia Grace, Frank Zhou, Hazel's boyfriend, Rachel- Elizabeth Dare, Charles Beckondorf, Silena Beauregard, Clarisse la Rue, Chris Rodriguez, and you already know Bianca and Hazel." I said quickly. Everyone gave their little introductions of "Hello" and "Nico to meet you" and "Thanks for letting us come" except for Clarisse who just nodded and Riley who squealed and said: "Oh thank you thank you _thank_ you, Mr.- Mr. Zeus. This is beyond amazing!"

"Well it was a pleasure meeting you all. Has your father come 'round yet, Perseus?"

"Nah, was he supposed to?"

"I just assumed… Anyway, good night all. I shall see you all again soon, hopefully. I'd just love it if Percy brought you all 'round more often." He said and waved, walking away.

"Okay, Percy, I hate to say this, but your uncle- it probably the hottest 30 something year old… ever. Hotter than freaking Brad Pitt and you know how much I dig him." Rachel said immediately. Riley looked over at her and nodded her head with wide eyes, while Piper giggled and Clarisse rolled her eyes.

"This is _so_ fucking fantastic!" Beckondorf groaned, stuffing his face with some soufflé. Silena gave him the evil eye and Chris laughed loudly enough to get the attention of some adults.

I found out our waitress's name was Jenny.

Jenny was apparently from Hollywood… Florida, like 10 blocks away from the beach, and she moved to New York to study art. She was 20 years old, and she had just been dumped by her boyfriend. I learned all of this while making "small talk" with her as she repeatedly filled my flute with champagne. After about 5 glasses, I switched to some really strong wine and by the end of the night I was tipsy, and I had Jenny's phone number in my pocket, with Bianca holding onto my arm, giggling and trying to keep me from stumbling around.

"I'm taking Percy back to his place." She announced suddenly. Nico glared at me, his eyes wide, nostrils flared, back rigid and l knew he was sober. I shrugged, like it didn't matter, but I could feel the heat of his Death Glare of Doom as I walked towards my car.

Bianca drove me home, alright.

As soon as we walked through the doors, I dragged her with me into the basement. That smashed glass was still shattered everywhere and the place reeked of alcohol and I liked it. Out lips crashed together, hers were warm and plush but anything but gentle. I wove my fingers through her hair, pulling out the little clips she'd used to hold it back, and she licked my lips and sucked on my tongue, making me gasp into the kiss.

I loosened my tie with my free hand, and also unzipped her dress, liking the way the material piled on the floor.

"Nico is so going to kick my ass." I mumbled.

_Drowning_

Thank the gods for Fridays, right? Because if it wasn't Saturday I'd have the worst day at school ever. I didn't want to not show up anyway, because then I'd have a hell of a lot of homework to make up.

Nico called me about a thousand times after I woke up. I was passed out on the couch in the basement with a blanket pulled up over my ass and a note next to my head.

_Better than I expected from my brother's best friend. Wanna do it again sometime? 555-2367_

_-Bianca_

And so it had finally happened. I'd taken Nico's sister home and banged her in my parent's house right under their noses. I vaguely remember her telling me she was on the pill, but I know it didn't matter because I pulled out anyway.

Ew.

First message: _Okay, so Bianca told my parents she would be at our house to stay for the week, and I haven't seen her since the freaking restaurant bro. I hope you didn't like, throw up on her or something. Call me back, di Angelo._

Second message: _Right. So. Persephone just cussed me out because Bianca wasn't home yet. If she's nursing your sorry ass and you don't wanna let her leave, cool. But pick up the effing phone and tell me that so I can lie to the 'rents. Call me, di Angelo._

Third message: _Oh my fucking gods Jackson! I swear if you're banging my sister right now, I will personally come and kill the shit outta your ass. You ain't even got 7 minutes, let alone seven days you ass. Call me the fuck back, di Angelo._

Fourth message: _I'm driving to you fucking house right fucking now you stupid prick. I am going to arrive in no less than two minutes after this message is sent. I hope you have a fucking gun or some shit because I am going to fuck. You. Up. Fuck you, sincerely from your best effing friend whose sister you just screwed, you freaking ninny, di Angelo. _

All of those. Messages. From Nico. di Angelo. Who I'm sure is going to keep his word.

My phone started ringing.

"H-Hello?" I asked wearily.

"Percy fucking Jackson! How the hell have you been you cocky fucked up prick who just shoved himself into my fucking sister? You know, I was beginning to worry that you'd never get any pussy again after Annabeth. But I guess you've made a full recovery, ditching school, drinking, hanging with your friends, fucking my fucking sister. You wanna smoke a joint later?" he said, deadly calm. My hand was shaking.

"Hey Neeks." I said nervously. He laughed harshly and I could picture him rolling his eyes.

"Get your ass into the kitchen." He grumbled, and hung up.

I put on my underwear from last night, and walked up the stairs. I didn't pay attention to the fact that my head was throbbing like nobody's business, and I didn't pay attention to how much I needed some vodka or how much I really wanted to go swimming or to the fact that I looked like shit and Nico already looked like the Ghost King or something.

He was sitting at the island in our kitchen on one of the bar stools, nursing a glass of orange juice, and eating one of my mom's special oatmeal raisin cookies like he used to when we were freshman. He'd tell my mom it was all me, too. He was still in his pajama bottoms, black sweatpants, but he'd slipped on a black t-shirt that I'd actually left at his shirt. It had that IronMan heart thing on it.

"What the hell Percy?" he asked quietly. Nico looked absolutely dead as he looked up at me. The circles under his eyes that were usually purple had turned a sickly green and gray and his hands were literally shaking as he drank his juice. He looked like bereavement, insomnia, hatred and pure freaking anger all rolled up into one.

"What's up, Neeks? I tried. He brushed his black hair from his even darker eyes and stood up. Though he was thin, and a few months younger than me, he was my height, if not an inch or two taller, and he looked absolutely lethal.

"Cut the shit. I just need to know." He snapped. I winced, trying not to meet his eyes. He looked like a god, like some Adonis just walking the streets. His pants hung lower than usual on his waist, not only giving us a glimpse of his boxers but of a sliver of pale skin too. The shirt was loose on his lithe frame and you could detect the smallest trace of his hip bones through the material.

"Know what?" I asked, avoiding the subject. Needing to look away from those lips and cheeks bones and eyes and everything else that was Nico. Like the fact that he was wearing freaking combat boots with sweatpants and an IronMan t-shirt, how much of a contradiction is that?

"Did you fuck my sister?" he breathed, like the thought pained him. My chest constricted at the sight of him, at the want for him. I felt my ribs concaving on my lungs and I felt the hot burn of insanity crawling up my spine like something from a movie. I watched helplessly as it seared my brain and cracked open like new champagne in my mine. Just a burst of color and pain and little thought. The thoughts I could process were bits and pieces that I'd never decipher.

I stepped forward and smashed my lips against his red puffy ones.

**Ooh, a cliffy, huh? I hope you guys totally LOVE please read and review.**

**But you wanna know what I noticed? Percy Jackson fans are not very generous with reviews. They **_**view**_** every freaking thing, but don't leave any feedback or praise or even insults. Maximum Ride lovers are so much nicer. If you guys wanna change that, and be, not only the best lemon slash writers, but also the best reviewers and fans, do me a favor and tell me what you like, what you hate, what you wanna see, hell, even ask me some questions about me, the fanfiction, or the awesomeness that graces this earth by the name of Nico di Angelo! 3 Nightmares!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Oh I left you in suspense now didn't I? Really, I'm not sorry about it, I hope it kept you all reading, especially something as spectacular as Percy freaking kissing Nico! Um, this chapter is basically after the kiss, Percy's thoughts as he gets smashed again and goes out. Then it changes to Nico's point of view. And as we all know, Nico always has his own thoughts.**

**Also, I'm thinking about changing the rating to M, tell me what you think through PM or review. Thanx.**

Chapter 6: Get Out.

Nico gasped and pulled back incredulously, looking absolutely appalled and shocked and disgusted and every other word in the world that could describe how totally stunned he looked. His eyes widened, showing off how bloodshot they were, and he stumbled backwards, knocking into the island, not so smoothly. He sort of just stared at me as my heart left a dent in my ribs from pounding so hard, and my stomach basically felt like it was eating itself because it hurt so effing badly. My knees were pretty weak, not because I was afraid of what Nico was going to do, but because I was afraid that I enjoyed kissing him. I was afraid I'd want to do it again and then I really wouldn't be wanted anywhere. I was afraid Nico wasn't going to talk to me anymore, that he was going to tell Rachel, and Riley and Hazel and Frank and the twins and everyone else at school, and I'd never live it down.

"I-I uh, I um- I- gods Nico-I didn't- please- Nico…" I stammered. My mouth was dry and all I wanted to do was swallow all the water in the world and hopefully drown from the lack of oxygen, the lack of breathing. I wanted this horrible pounding, throbbing, stabbing pain in my lungs to just kill me, because it's not like I was needed or wanted on this earth, and I didn't want to be here and the pain felt so good but it felt horrible too. I deserved it, actually. For holding Annabeth back, my mother, worrying Paul, and Nico, and Rachel and for confusing the hell out of Nico too, for banging his sister. I deserved all of this.

"Percy, you need help." Nico stated slowly. He looked up at me, with a plea in his eyes. He wasn't wiping at his lips in revolt, in fact he seemed to be licking them quite a lot, and he looked scared, he looked like he was terrified of what would happen next, to the both of us.

"What do you mean?" I finally managed to choke out through the pain. Surely enough, when this pain was gone, I'd be left as nothing. Nothing but something left discarded and unwelcome and weird and strange and unwanted and all those other bad adjectives that would describe me.

"Percy, you're breaking inside your own head. You're falling the fuck apart. And I know you loved her, hell she was like my sister for the –what- 2 ½ years you were dating. But this, this is out of control man. You've gone completely off your fucking head!" Nico sighed. He was tired, I was tired, but I wasn't tired like he was. He was tired, because he gets no sleep, because he stays up for hours and hours and hours because of stress. Stress that's not induced by school, he's got a 4.0 GPA, stress that's not induced by sports, he doesn't even want to play college sports or anything serious, not even stress about the family, because he doesn't even consider himself a part of it. The stress that keeps him up for hours and hours and more hours is me, his best friend who didn't fall off the deep end, he jumped, dove. I was tired because I didn't have anything left in me, I was running on emptiness and it wasn't enough.

"I need _help_?" I sneered, suddenly angry. He doesn't know what it's like to have his heart ripped out of him through his freaking mouth, stomped on and then shoved back into your body all fucked up beyond repair, through your freaking stomach. He doesn't know what it's like to be dead inside because the one thing your heart was actually beating for, the one reason why you breathed, showed up to school, any type of practice, totally left you. He doesn't know what it means to be thrown away, unwanted, he doesn't under-freaking-stand and he has the nerve, the audacity to tell me I need _help_! I'm not insane.

_I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_. _I'm not insane._ I'm not insane. _I am not insane_.

I don't know who the hell he thinks he is.

"Yes. Percy, I'm your best friend, and I have been since you could freaking walk, and I am telling you, that from the bottom of my heart, I freaking love you, man. You've been there through it all, you're my brother. And as your brother, best friend, self-assigned conscience, and the only person you know who has given a flying fuck through it _all_ I am saying, that you Percy freaking Jackson, need help." He rushed the words out like they tasted funny on his tongue. I hoped they did. I hoped he felt like shit for calling me insane. I'm here. Every single freaking second. Through every ache and pain that she caused, I sat there and took it. I took it so he wouldn't have to worry, so he wouldn't grow gray hairs. He doesn't understand how much I wanted to give up, to let it all go.

"Fuck you Nico." I breathed. He recoiled further from me, because I wanted him to.

I am not insane. I am not okay, or insane, or crazy, or depressed or fucking angry. I'm Percy Jackson and I don't need _shit_. I don't need the fucking booze, I like it. I don't need the water, or Annabeth, because she's a bitch and like 70 fuck percent of my body is water and I don't need anymore. I smoke weed cause it's fun, I take acid because it's crazy as hell.

But don't need that shit, and I'm going to show him.

"Percy…"

"I don't need you! I don't fucking need any of you dammit! Get the hell out!" I shouted, making him flinch. Good.

_Drowning_

Fuck Nico. If he thinks I'm freaking cracked, that's great for him. But for right now I'm going to get out, get out and smoke a joint, pop a couple of pills, get totally smashed, just to prove I don't need any of this shit. My mom can disown me, Nico and Rachel can ditch me, I can fail every single fucking class I take, and will I give a flying shit? No. Because I don't need any of it, and I sure as hell don't need _help_.

I went to Blink. I kind of just wandered around in my nice clothes until some girl came up to me.

"Hi." She chirped. Her voice was way too high and I could tell she was a duntz. But she was high, and wasted, and she didn't remember her freaking address and that's what I wanted.

"Hello beautiful, what's your name?" I asked, putting on my voice that I reserved for dunken girls who were super-hot. And she was the epitome of hot, with long blond hair that touched her butt, it was pin straight and there wasn't an artificial highlight or streak in it. She was wearing a pretty blue dress that hugged her curves, and her thighs were muscled, like a dancer's or a runner's. Her eyes were electric blue, kind of frightening, but sweet because she was so adorable. She had some of the highest cheek bones I'd ever seen and her eyelashes were thick and gorgeous.

"I'm Stella. You are?"

"Percy." I flashed a grin at her. Gods, she was hot. Her tits were just staring me right in the face and all I wanted was to kiss her senseless. Those lips, sure as hell were tempting.

"I'm gonna buy you a round, _Percy_." She slurred. It reminded me of a Death Cab song, Crooked Teeth. Yeah, she's so cute when she's slurring her speech.

An hour later I was piss drunk and I had her pressed up against a wall, skirt hiked up to her hips as I kissed her neck and grinded against her. She moaned and writhed and she made me want her like nothing else.

But I didn't need her.

You know what, Death Cab lyrics are popping up everywhere. **(Right there he'd be like "yeah you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me." And I hate to say that but that's how effed up Percy is right now, disrespecting women and crap.)**

_Nico P.O.V_

_I'm really fucking pissed off right now so don't even walk near me. Anyone. If someone freaking interrupts me during this rant I will explode and then kill the living fuck outta them, so if I were you, I'd stick around for this shit._

_I don't think Percy freaking realizes how much he fucking means to me. He is my brother, and has been forever. Which is why I didn't punch this shit out of him when he fucking kissed me. I didn't knee him in the balls like I wanted to or beat him with a fucking baseball bat for fucking my sister, and the gods know I've got a savage wind up with a bat. I don't think he realizes how much I want my former best friend back, he doesn't know that I know how it feels to have the only woman you truly love just leave you like it never mattered. He doesn't know that I watched him fall in love, I watched him when we were twelve and I knew that he would never not love her. I knew it. I watched him even when my mother took those pills and left me with a woman who didn't care about me and never would and a broken father. I watched out for him and he has the fucking nerve to think that I don't know about fucking pain!_

_He doesn't know that I had scars running up my arms when I was 14 because I was fucked up in the head. He doesn't know that my dad literally begged me to get them removed even though I wanted to show them to the world. He doesn't know that I literally do not fucking sleep because I see my mother's face behind my eyelids. He doesn't know anything about anything except fucking water! He doesn't fucking understand anything and I swear to gods if the next time I see him he's drunk I'm going to kick his ass._

_I need to breathe, I need to get this anger out and I need to do it now or I am going to die._


	8. Chapter 8

**Okay that last chapter was a piece of crap but I wrote it in a hurry so I could get to this! If you're wondering, Luke is coming up, I've decided to not do Annabeth's POV at all because I hate her in this story even though I wrote it, and Nico and Percy will not die. I don't think. And there will be no more kissing (I'm a Nicery fan too guys, so I'm not doing it cause I'm against yaoi-ness) Um, the last chapter I was suffering from a case of writer's block and it sucks and is mostly just filler. I sort of hated it, but I hope you guys didn't. **

**I've noticed that I've gotten lots of VIEWS but not REviews, it's slightly frustrating because I need these reviews to make me actually want to write the chapter. So even if it's a corny "this was awesome" one liner, I'll totally take it, and I'm going to start replying to reviews just because the few of you who do review are totally boss and you guys deserve it.**

**Another thing (this is going to be really long) I am going to do a Maximum Ride fanfiction! It's going to be a lot like this, but it'll deal with cutting more than just all together being fucked up in the head like Percy. Um, also I don't really want a beta. I mean, I like having someone else reading my work but I don't really want a beta just for the sole fact that I like to change everything suddenly, and nothing is ever enough and stuff, so. Yeah.**

**Gods, in this chapter I think I'm going to introduce Luke, do a time skip, more Nico POV, and also some Rachel. Octavian's going to be in the chapter and we're going to find out some crap about Riley and Nico's crushes and stuff on each other. Right.**

**On with the chapter!**

Chapter 7: Plans

Stella. She was a wild night, all blonde hair like wind and blue eyes like water that I wanted to drown in and arms and legs like vines that wrapped me up.

She drove a convertible, and I drove it to my place. I guess my house was something else to her because we pulled up and she gasped. My mother's BMW and Paul's Lexus were parked out front and their room light was still on, meaning that they were either waiting up for me to make sure I was okay, or on the phone with someone. I wished it was the latter but I knew mom was probably talking to Sharon, her manager.

I kissed Stella again, and yanked her up the front steps. She squealed and giggled and I shushed her with another kiss. We giggled like little kids as I unlocked the doors.

I won't go into the gory details of my night with Stella. All you need to know is that I sent her into the basement and stole a bottle of vodka for the night that ended up empty. We smoked a joint, laughed, and in the morning we both woke up naked and happy. So there.

_Drowning_

"I don't want to go." She whined, her fingers traced up and down my chest and I didn't want her to leave either. Her voice was annoying and her laugh was nasal but she was hot and she made the sexiest noises at night, she was quite the minx in bed.

"I don't want you to leave either, but you've gotta." She rolled her eyes and scowled at me a little. I handed her an Advil but she just scowled deeper.

"No breakfast?"

"No breakfast. C'mon, my mom's gonna be down." I whispered hurriedly. Her eyes widened and she scoffed.

"Your _mom_? I thought you were worried about a roommate."

"I'm in high school. So get the hell out and I won't call the cops."

So she's gone now. She actually high tailed it out of there as soon as she heard high school, and I wanted to laugh at her for being such an idiot. But then again, I'm stupid my damn self, so who the hell cares right?

I spent the rest of my Sunday drinking straight vodka from the bottle. It made my head hurt but it made my heart numb so I didn't mind at all. I watched stupid cartoons and laughed and threw up some too. I hated this. I hated this. I didn't want to keep touching my lips thinkthinkthinking about how amazing it felt to place them on Nico's. I just got laid last night by some model broad for gods' sake! Why the heck was I thinking about Nico?

He called me twice. I wanted so desperately to answer the phone calls, I wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice, to listen to him laugh and enjoy the sting of his breath through the radio waves. I wanted nothing more than to go back to how things used to be. I wanted us to be close, no matter the cost. I'd kiss him every single day if that got him to talk to me, if that got him to worry about me and think about me and care about me again and not just think of me as something that's been there forever. Hell, dirt's been here forever!

I just needed him, you know? Do you? Do you know what it feels like to totally need someone so completely that it hurt? To need them so much you piss them off just to hear them speak to you? You literally jump off of a building to feel them touch your skin one last time before you gave your last breath, you needed them so much you wouldn't even care if you were romantically involved, you just want them to hug you, to talk to you, to laugh with you.

Am I wrong for feeling like this, about Nico no less?

_Nico P.O.V_

_I have a feeling Percy's going to end up totally screwed for the rest of his life. Not only did he kiss me, but he seemed to want to do it again. I'm not a homophobe, but I'm not gay either and I know Percy isn't. This is just him trying to show me something he's afraid to say. This is him crying. Having sex with Bianca, missing school to get smashed, hiding his arms all the time, this is his version of crying. Hazel said I just have to let him ride this out, like he did when he moved from his little apartment._

_But this is different. _

_I feel like if I don't do something he'll end up drowning himself or something. _

_So I called him about 1,200 times. He didn't answer any of my calls, which is something weird for me because anytime I called anyone, they answered, especially Percy. I bet he was just sitting around watching Adventure Time, popping Oxy like freaking candy and guzzling down vodka faster than Hummers guzzle gas._

_Freaking great._

_He claimed he didn't need help. He was stubborn like that. Loyal to a fault, sticking with me even when he just wanted to climb under a rock and die. So I know that he won't go to a therapist or a rehab or even talk to me because he doesn't need help. This is Percy Jackson we're talking about. He probably thinks he's saving someone from falling down the same well that he did. But the thing is, I'd let him kiss me a thousand times more if I got to see him every second of everyday. If I got to make sure he was always okay. I'd kiss him myself if that meant he'd talk to me, if it meant that he'd tell me what was going on in his head, what he was thinking, feeling._

_This was driving me insane, not knowing what he was thinking._

_I've got this theory. When Annabeth was around, he'd been bright and happy, and she'd been around since we were 12. She'd always been the girl of our little group and so he was always fine with dumping all his emotional crap on her, and as soon as she was gone, out of the picture, it was gone. Everything in his head stayed in his head because his walking talking diary had just dropped off the face of the earth. If that was the case then maybe we just needed to get him a notebook, maybe we needed to force him to a therapist. I don't know, but I do know I want him to be okay._

_I sat around on Sunday listening to my guilty pleasure, Ida Maria __**(some people I've PM-ed would know I absolutely love her)**__ and smoking joints and what not. Hazel says I need to quit smoking weed and for like 2 months I did quit, and I ended up addicted to cigarettes. So. Bianca is so happy it's ridiculous and it's beginning to make me want to strangle the shit out of her. Does she not realize that Percy's so broken we haven't even found all of the freaking pieces? Does she not know that he only used her to forget for a few hours that he'd lost his mind and didn't know where the heck to look._

And that's what gave me the idea.

_I immediately called Rachel. She had always been good for helping make sure Percy didn't kill himself while I'm not looking. I guess, lately neither of us have been doing our job very well, because at the rate he's going, he'll die of alcohol poisoning before we could do anything and we were just letting him. He probably went out and got totally wasted and took some bar fly home with him. _

"_Hello?" she said into the receiver._

"_I'll be over your place in ten." I muttered and hung up. I think that annoyed people, when I just say one sentence and hang up, but Rachel doesn't mind, she says it's funny._

_I grabbed my keys, a Led Zeppelin t-shirt, and my boots before running downstairs to the garage. I drove through the back roads to Rachel's place with no shoes, and no shirt, not really caring, just needing to see her "average American family" home. I was always more comfortable at her place than I was in my own mansion, and it was stocked full of food and technology and my sister had some seriously hot cheerleader friends._

_In retrospect, I guess knocking on her door with nothing but sweatpants and boots on wasn't a good idea. I had bedroom hair, but I always did, and I wasn't wearing a shirt and the pants were low on my hips. I kept trying to wear pants that fit better because Percy had been really distracted by my fucking hip bones, but I'm skinny, so what can we do?_

_The reason why my choice of no shirttedness was ridiculously stupid was because I didn't know if her parents were home. More importantly I didn't know that her older stepbrother, Octavian, was back, visiting form college._

"_Who the fuck are you?" he growled suddenly. I really wasn't expecting the door to just swing open like that. Maybe I should've gotten Hazel's key, or better yet, I should've brought her with me!_

"_Nico di Angelo." I shrugged, like I wasn't scared, but really I was pretty terrified. He had this long scar running on his neck and I was sure he'd cut the hell out of me without a freaking afterthought. Nice right?_

"_The fuck are you doing here?"_

"_Why do you say the word "fuck" so much? It's unbecoming." I squinted at him._

"_What do you want, brat?" he grunted, irritated. Okay, irritated I could handle. But not "I'll stab the shit out of you, you little turd, if you don't get the fuck away from me." It actually scared me, can you believe that? Plus, this guy didn't look like he was all there, if you catch my drift._

"_I'm here for Rache." I said, pulling my shirt over my head and yanking my pants up in the process._

"_Oh my goodness! Are you her friend Nicolai? __**(I hope that's actually pronounced Neek-o-lie cause if it ain't I'll look really stupid.)**__ That little scrawny kid? Dude, what the hell happened to you?" he gushed as he shoved me into their house. I loved the way it always smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg. It was welcoming. My house always smelled like burning hair follicles, and strong perfume. I guess you wouldn't know that, considering I haven't even let you into one of my arguments with the 'rents but it's not like you care or anything._

"_Um, yeah. I go by Nico now. Started working out."_

"_Yeah, dude I remember you used to look so sick all the time. I mean, you're still really skinny but now I don't think you're anorexic, just small I guess. I'll go get Rachel." He said. I guess he was less insane than I thought. But not totally and completely stable like his sister._

_I walked into the family room, where there were muddy shoes on the couch and food wrappers in between the cushions. Persephone would pitch a fit if she saw something like this. I can just imagine that ugly veins in her forehead popping out all weirdly._

_Anyway, I sat down on the couch, kicking my boots up, they were heavy as hell, and bobbing my head to the music Octavian had been playing. I think it was Metric or something, but either way he had good taste. Not exactly metal, not indie either or pop. It was something else. So of course, while I'm mumbling along to the words, some blonde kid walks out of the kitchen. He's got salt and pepper hair and blue eyes and he'd be a total 90's Leonardo DiCaprio except for this scar running on his right cheekbone __**(I don't really remember where specifically)**__ it completely mars the illusion._

"_Who are you?" I asked. He was eating peanut butter straight out the jar like a weirdo. I mean, really, who eats that much peanut butter? No one, exactly. Unless they're high._

"_Luke. __**(Yes. **_**The**_** Luke)**__ Octavian's friend." He shrugged, and I nodded suspiciously._

"_Oh. Roommates or something?" I guessed and he smirked like he knew something I didn't._

"_More like, or something." He chuckled, and I was giving him a weird look, about to give him an even more creeped out answer when Rachel stumbled into the room. She was wearing some of Octavian's old basketball shorts and her hair was up on top of her head. She looked like she just rolled out of the bed, and it was like, 3 o'clock in the afternoon._

"_Hey Neeks." She grinned sleepily. _

"_Did you just get up?" I laughed and got up to hug her. What can I say, she makes me happy._

"_Yep. I was up last night fanfictioning." She shrugged like it was nothing, though I knew that meant she was up until like 5 am reading. She's such a weirdo._

"_Hey, I gotta talk to you, it's really important." I mumbled in her ear. She looked up at me curiously, and motioned for Luke and Octavian to get out._

_She sat down on the couch, Indian style, and patted the spot next to her. I collapsed on the floor instead, looking up at her through my hair. I was dead tired, I have to admit, and the high from the weed was wearing off. I didn't feel laughy and hungry anymore and nothing was as sharp and detailed or as blurry as it was when I was high. This part of smoking sucked. So we probably both looked like some strung out druggies, all super exhausted and malnourished and shit._

"_Let's go to the beach." I suggested brightly. Her eyes widened and she looked at me like I'd finally lost it._

"_You do realize that it's October in freaking New York, right? It's going to be freezing."_

_I shrugged, "I'll get us tickets to fucking… California or something."_

"_Why do you want to go to the beach?" she asked doubtfully, stroking my hair absent mindedly._

"_Well, I know Percy. And I know that his whole life fell down the shit hole at a beach, while it was all rainy and suckish. Maybe if we go to a beach while it's happy and full of life, he'll be like "This is why I love life" or some sappy bullshit like that." She seemed to be lost in thought, a little wrinkle forming in her brow as she sat, so I stopped talking though I really wanted her to flacking say something because I was getting nervous._

"_You think it'll work? Could- could Hades give you enough to like, rent some space out, make sure no one comes near us while we have a bonfire or something? Sing some songs, we could invite a bunch of people. And we don't even have to go to Cali or anything, maybe just… Florida." She shrugged, and looked at me straight on for the first time._

"_If I didn't think it would work, I wouldn't have said it."_

"_Dude, you are a freaking genius!"_

_I know I am._


	9. Chapter 9

**Okay, so now, everything is peachy for Nico. He's like some kind of mental mastermind. And now that you've got all that, you'll see exactly what Luke's part in this will be. And I think at the beginning of this fanfiction I said they'd all be normal by chapter 8, well, I lied. I want this to be a lot longer than I had when I first started writing. So yeah.**

**Also: Please please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea sepleasepleaseplease please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea sepleasepleaseplease please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea sepleasepleaseplease please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea sepleasepleaseplease please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea sepleasepleaseplease please please please please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplea sepleasepleaseplease don't forget to RE-FREAKING-VIEW! If I find out that you favorited and didn't review, I will track you down and choke you to death with chocolate chip cookies and stuffed narwhals. So serious. Dead serious in fact.**

**On with the chapter!**

Chapter 8: Destruction

I skipped the next week of school. I know, I know, truancy is actually a crime and I'm going to have a hell of a lot of work to make up when I got back. But for now, all I wanted was to sit in bars and drink until I lost consciousness. I wanted to forget about that kiss with Nico. Gods! He was ruining my life without even being near me. I hadn't seen him since Saturday and now it was Friday and he'd called me a thousand times. I just… I couldn't. I liked knowing that he still wanted me, and I didn't want to ruin that want with my voice, or my laugh or my presence for that matter.

I was stuck in this haze, actually. The school had called my house, my mom had cried for hours, Paul had yelled and I had sat, just watching this crack on the wall get bigger and bigger. Soon our foundations were going to fall and there wouldn't be anything left except pain, broken bones and dust. I don't think either one of them called.

And when I was supposed to be showering, I'd sit there for literally hours without realizing it. The feeling of the water against my skin felt like death stabbing me all over and I hated it, but I deserved it for ruining everything in everyone's life, for holding her back. I mean, for holding everyone back. So I sat there and took the pain.

I missed 3 swim practices 2 meets and I hadn't actually swam in… I can't remember how long. But I didn't care because this tequila had a death grip on my heart and it was beating slow, and I liked the way it felt to be held under for way too long of a time. I don't know, it felt like I was finally drowning. Like, when I had been trying it didn't work, but as soon as I stopped caring all my dreams came true, to a point where I couldn't dream and anymore and I was loving it. Sick, huh.

For the first time, I walked into my bathroom, acting like I was about to shave, that's what I kept telling my conscience, and I even believed it until I felt the monster biting and nipping at my skin. Until I saw the blood drip down my arm and it was warm and welcome. I felt it too. It cut through this disgusting haze I was living in. I stung a little bit, it throbbed, it told me I was alive. I had a pulse, and blood, and I even felt it a little. I was still here.

A little.

I cut a little deeper with each slice. My skin tore open and my heart stopped at the sight. There was something under there, I was still here. I didn't want to be. I wanted my mother to hold me. Maybe she would if I ended up passed out in a pool. Of my blood. Maybe I'd swim in it.

Someone was knocking on my door.

"H-hold on!" I shouted. I turned on the water, rinsed off the razor, cleaned off my arm sloppily, and pulled my sleeve back down. The burn made my vision blur around the edges and it felt so good.

It was Nico.

He had slept, obviously. He was pale, but not sickly, like, almost green. His under eye circles weren't completely gone but they were only a light purple-ish color and he was wearing a black shirt with navy blue stripes and his jeans weren't black but dark gray. He still had bedroom hair, but he looked comfortable in the air.

"Hey." He said quietly. Quieter than usual. Meaning he wasn't completely okay, but getting there.

"Wha's up?" I tried not to slur my speech and I don't think he noticed that I was wasted.

"Why weren't you at school all week? Me and Rache had something to tell you." He said, walking back into my room and throwing himself face first into my bed, like he did when he was so pissed he couldn't even speak.

"You two finally got together?" I chuckled, feeling my arm throb, like the cuts were mocking me. Like they were saying I'd never be normal again, so I could stop with the façade.

"Ha ha. I actually need to talk to Riley, she was out Wednesday to Friday, stomach bug, you know I kinda like her."

"Yeah, I know. So what did you have to tell me?"

"We're planning a trip to Florida." He stated, like he did that type of stuff on a regular basis.

"Why?"

"Beaches are hot there right now. It's freaking frigid out here." **(Did you recognize that? He said that it some earlier chapter! I'm so boss.)**

"Um, okay." I was standing in the door of my bathroom and I could feel my warm blood dripping into my palm. It hurt like nobody's business, but at least I could feel it. I couldn't even bring myself to get all excited about Florida and its beaches and sexy girls, or the fact that on my first birthday we actually went down there and I took a picture with like… Minnie Mouse or something.

"Why aren't you excited? It's gonna be _so_ boss! Hot girls, the water, hot girls! I'm only bring my closest buds. So basically you, Rachel, Hazel and Riley. I'm still thinking about taking the twins."

The cuts were burning, like… well like hell and all I wanted was to pour rubbing alcohol over them and feel the burn all the way in my bones, but Nico was here and my vision was getting cloudier and cloudier and I could barely see anything at all, not even Nico's hair and it was two times shiner than usual. My spine was shaking and my teeth were chattering and I could feel myself getting sleepier and sleepier. I was dreaming about swimming in this delicious red water that tasted like my soul. It was salty, bitter, it was a little sweet and spicy too. I was swimming, not drowning for once because the water was me and I was just sinking into myself and it felt good.

"Percy…" Nico started slowly. I couldn't see him anymore and my body weighed a thousand pounds and I couldn't hold myself up so I was using the walls, and they were closing in, so I dropped them before they crushed me up.

I was on the floor and my arm was on fire and usually I wanted water, but the way this fire felt, I liked it, so I only wanted more. I wish I'd cut a little deeper, and maybe this would've happened sooner, maybe it would've hurt more, maybe I'd have more blood to drown in and drink down. Maybe maybe maybe, all this was for nothing and I'd be damaged goods forever. Maybe maybe maybe I'd done all this to myself for no reason and I was leading everyone down this horrible path of destruction and no one would be saved. All these maybes and I wasn't focused on the fact that everything was as black as Nico's eyes around me and all I heard was him screaming:

"Percy!" and dialing on his iPhone and finally finally finally after all this carnage finally after all this destruction and ruin I was really truly honestly really truly honestly after I drank myself silly, popped so many pills it's not funny, banged so many girls I probably have a disease, really truly honestly after I cut too deeply I was finally finally finally enough to make someone notice me. I was finally enough for Nico to see that I didn't need anyone to help me.

I could end the pain myself.

_Drowning_

For a while everything was nothing. There was nothing and everything at the same time, like I was drowning and suffocating and breathing and floating while this black tendril wrapped around my chest and strangled the life out of me. It didn't hurt. It felt like something cold was walking across my skin and nibbling at my pores. It felt like I was eating my mom's blue chocolate chip cookies when I was twelve. It felt like Nico and I were joy riding in Hades's car again, it felt like I was building my life and destroying it at the same time. It felt like I was kissing Annabeth and watching her walk away from me for the last time.

And as I watched this, I realized what I had done.

I'd been happy, I had been the happiest a teenager can get with relatively good grades, I swam better than anyone in the state, I had the greatest friends, my mom was happy and successful and everything was perfect and I flushed it all away, washed it away with liquor and girls and smoke and pills and blood, and I don't know where it all went but I wanted it back. But I was over and done and I don't even know where the hell I went, so how am I supposed to get my life back? How am I supposed to make sure everyone around me knows I'm okay when I can't even remember how to be okay?

I woke up and everything was everything, where it was supposed to be, how it was supposed to be except nothing because everything was white and bright and there was beeping and sniffing and snoring and so much more that was killing my eyes and stabbing my skull and just all together freaking _hurt_.

My mother was sitting in a chair, her hair all ratty, her skin pale. Nico was spread out on the floor, and I was pretty sure the nurses had tried to make him get up and carry his ass home. Rachel was sitting in the chair next to my mother with Nico's head in her lap, stroking his hair absently. She looked like she was strung out, probably from staying up all night painting, and fanfictioning and worrying. Nico looked like himself, and I tried to stop staring at him, but I couldn't.

I hated this. I was still here, here and still breathing even though I'd put all of the people who cared through this hell. I didn't deserve to be here still.

And you want to know what got me: I cut one time and I end up hospitalized.

_Nico P.O.V_

_I just wanted to see him. I wanted to see him smile again, and I wanted to know if he was okay, I wanted to know if he wanted to go to the beach with me and Rache and I wanted to know if he was sober or if he was sleeping or passed out. I wanted to know if he'd watched the latest episode of Adventure Time or if he'd just skipped out on it. I wanted to know if he'd been partying without me because if he had I'd be pretty pissed. I wanted to know._

_So of course when he out of nowhere just passes out and I see blood just pooling around him I automatically know._

_That he's gone freaking crazy._

_I know that he cut too deep, I know that he didn't want to be on earth anymore, I know he wanted to leave, leave Rachel, Riley, his mom, school, swimming, me. Most importantly, he wanted to leave me. I know it's selfish but what the fuck do you expect from me? He's my best friend and has been since the beginning of forever. Did he think he could just end it like that? Did he think that he could get off so easily._

__Drowning__

_I knew he was awake because the heart monitor started going crazy. I knew he was panicking because I opened my eyes and he was fidgeting like mad. I wanted him to squirm, I wanted to see him take in all the damage and destruction he'd caused. It was all his fault. All of this. It was his fault that we were in the hospital, his fault that I haven't _really_ slept in months, it was his fault that I'd been listening to Ida Maria more and more to try and make myself happy, it was his fault I was so worried and shit that I hadn't had sex in like 2 months, and I'm the freaking man, so therefore, we all know something is wrong. It was his fault and I hated it and I wanted to make it better but I couldn't because he was way too far gone. He had drowned and he'd gone under and he wasn't going anywhere because there was no one left who could do anything for him except that nice lady behind the desk at the mental ward._

"_Percy." I croaked. My voice was deep and raspy because I hadn't talked to anyone in 2 days. I'd given blood and I'd been poked and prodded and unconscious on the freaking floor for hours and I'd been waiting to talk to Percy fucking Jackson and now he was conscious so I could hear him. _

"_I-I'm sorry." He said immediately. His voice was flat and his eyes were closed and he looked way worse than usual, like me on a bad day, and it was literally painful to watch him like this._

"_It's fine P-," I started, but his eyes snapped open and they were wild, and feral and just all together scarier than I'd ever seen them in my entire life._

"_It's not! It's not! It's not okay because it's all down the drain. Everything, I'm going to quit swimming, heck I probably got kicked off the freaking team, I haven't been to any practices in like forever, and I screwed your sister and now you hate me, and I've been ignoring Rachel and Annabeth didn't want me, didn't need me and my mom doesn't care and Paul is such a douche bag that can do no freaking wrong and it freaking sucks because if you really want to know, he's not here because he's the one who keeps putting it in my face. All the alcohol, all of the pills, he keeps buying it and buying it and he's doing it on freaking purpose I know. I'm probably failing junior year right now, and it's this early in this semester, I drank literally all week, I missed school on purpose so I could sit around at bars and pick up sluts and get drunk. You know I've had more sex in the past week than I ever did in my entire life? It's ridiculous I hope I don't have some kind of disease, seriously. I mean, I've tried drugs before. We've smoked joints and did acid and I've popped pills, but this week, with these girls, I mean dude- they were hot and they did coke and meth and- I don't know I was just trying to get it all out. I was trying to drown out all this… bullshit, y'know? When you feel like no one gives two flying fucks and you just want to either climb under a rock and die or scream your head off to make someone look you in the eye and tell you that they can freaking hear you or something. I want someone to actually tell me, let me hear them say that they know that I feel like shit and that they want to… listen? Or… I- I don't- you don't want to hear my shit, do you? You think I'm apeshit crazy." He ground out, his voice was raw and he sounded like every breath hurt and ached but he kept ripping holes in the sky to make sure that I heard every sentence, every word, every syllable, every letter. _

_He wanted to be heard and I hadn't been listening. He shouldn't have had to use words, especially not lying in a freaking hospital bed, I should've just looked at him and known that he just needed someone to listen or something or just… give him a hug? And not one of those wimpy guy-one-shouldered-pat-on-the-back-handshake things that we always do. I'm talking about a full blown squeeze-the-living-shit-out-of-your-suicidal-best-friend-because-he-freaking-needs-it kind of hugs._

"_I'm sorry. I'm a sorry ass best friend then, if you feel like you screamed directly in my fucking face and I didn't hear shit! I'm sorry, I should be the one who is sorry, the one who's sitting in the hospital, because you beat the shit outta me! Because I would let you, the gods know I would let you if that made you feel better, if that brought you out of this… hole I would gladly let you beat me the fuck up. I'd let you scream at me and I would do it happily, Percy. Just… please, do this for me." _

"_Do… what?" he asked skeptically, though I knew he somehow understood what I was saying._

"_I _need_ you to go to… therapy? I guess. I mean, I know you said you don't need it, but _I_ need it. I really do. I just want to be able to know that you're not gonna pull this bullshit again. I mean, dude, you're the man." I laughed at the end, trying to make him feel better._

_Like we were rebuilding after the demolition. After the destruction that is Percy _freaking_ Jackson._

**I kind of feel like that last line is a little deeper than you might think. I know in one chapter Percy said he used to be Percy freaking Jackson and he didn't know where that guy went. I feel like Nico is kind of saying, "Well hell, he never left. He was just… becoming himself?" like, maybe… I don't know like Percy freaking Jackson wasn't really Percy, so we had to go through this whole fucked up break everything stage so he could realize that he's still himself, just… a little more grown up. You guys probably think I'm psycho , but… it just fits for me. Yeah. Okay, so review please!**


	10. Chapter 10

**Okay, so I cried a little while writing the last chapter, and I'm hoping you guys will like this one. Um, this is pretty short, really just telling you what's going on. No real events. Also, if you go back to the Prologue, you'll see I did some changing, Luke is just Octavian's college senior friend and um… you'll see.**

**On with the chapter.**

Chapter 9: Rebuilding.

I feel like shit.

I feel like shit that someone took a sledgehammer to and ran over with a truck and totally barfed on just for the hell of it. That's how awful I feel. And I kinda feel like a poser because I sound like Nico.

I've been here for like, 2 weeks. Can you believe it? After Nico and I talked, about all type of crap like my weird kissing him, my drinking, his "detachment" I guess you know, him just being all "strong and silent", we talked about all the hot girls I fucked (excuse my vulgar language, I've been told not to filter my thoughts) we talked about talking and how awesome we'd be when I got out. We even decided to transfer out of Yancy Academy and just go to Goode High School together. We'd still see the gang, of course, we'd go out, but I wanted to meet new people, do something other than nothing and feel everything. Every little ache and pain, every shot of adrenalin and every little pang of happiness. I wanted it all and that's what I told Nico. I didn't want to live in just the pain like I had been doing and he got it, once I actually explained it to him.

Our trip to Florida has been officially postponed. I don't think anyone really minded though. It had been for me.

My mother and I made up, also. It went a little like this:

_My mom woke up after Nico had gone back to sleep. He had laid his head back in Rachel's lap and I suspected she wasn't going to wake up for a while, she probably hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, she was addicted to fanfiction. _

_Anyway, my mother's eyes widened as she looked over at me. My heart sped up a little and it was painfully obvious because of the heart monitor._

"_Percy." She whispered, and stood up. I said nothing, I just watched as she stepped over Nico, patted his head, kissed Rachel's cheek and stood next to me in the bed. Her eyes were big and watery and I hated that I had done this to her._

"_Hey." I croaked out. My throat was already closing, I was so full of guilt. For yelling at her, for being angry with her because of her job, I was a bad son and I could feel the tears coming, ready to show her how sorry I was._

"_Oh baby, don't cry." She cooed, and wrapped her arms around me. She was warm and she smelled like lilies and blue Jolly Ranchers. She smelled like cinnamon and sunshine and motherliness. She smelled like the brown haired beauty that I'd worshipped when I was 12._

"_I'm so sorry mom." I whispered, burying my face in her neck. I repeated myself over and over again, knowing that no matter how many times I said it, it would never be enough. Ever._

"_I'm going to be there, babe. I want you to know. I'm visiting twice a week, I'm going to Florida with you, we're going to Montauk when we get back, no more liquor in the house, and no more pills. Anywhere." She said sternly, and I just listened, loving the feeling of having her speak to me again, like a real mom would. I never realized how much I absolutely needed her until that moment._

"_I'm an idiot mom. I really am."_

"_It's okay hun. We all make mistakes." She whispered into my hair. Her breath even smelled like something wonderful, rainbows and cotton candy probably._

"_But… this was… horrible." _

"_Go to sleep. You and Nico lost a lot of blood. But it's okay, right baby? It's okay because now we can look at this and know that we can only get better. We can only move up and away from this. We can only rebuild because we can't be knocked down any further, huh?" she laughed a little and I gave her a smile. Because she was right, she was right and we both knew it, but neither of us said a word._

So.

Rachel woke up and immediately started crying. She hopped up, throwing Nico's head away from her, and coming to hug me. She cried and cried and cried and I wanted to beat myself up for doing this to her. She looked pitiful, she looked depressed, like someone in the ward where I was headed.

The reason I feel so crappy right now, is actually because today is the day Nico, Rachel and my mom are coming to visit me all together for the first time.

I'd seen them all though. Literally the day after I was locked in here Nico showed up. He was sick actually. The doctors said that he had the flu and it was stress induced or whatever, and I felt bad because 1) I didn't even know that was possible and 2) I'd caused it. Anyway, he walked into my room, which I shared with a guy called Dakota, who was an alcoholic. He had been in group therapy when Nico came in.

"What's up bro?" he'd said. I hadn't realized he was in the room and I nearly fell off the bed.

"Nico? What the heck are you doing here?"

That whole encounter had started out awkward. And it ended awkward too, with this weird ass hug thing that just didn't work.

But now my mom was here and I was done being pissed at her because she was here now and this is when I really truly honestly needed her. I'd thought Annabeth leaving had killed me, well I'd nearly killed myself and now that I needed her for real, she was around. Always.

"Percy!" Rachel squealed, and rapped her arms around me. I smiled into her neck, breathing in the familiar scent of deodorant and paint. Her hair was pulled back in an unruly pontytail and I hadn't known that I would miss her weirdness so much but I did and it felt good to hug her again.

"Gods Rache I missed you!" I breathed and she squeezed me tighter. She let me go and looked up at my face. According to Dakota, I looked like less of a crazy person than I did when I got here, so I guess my therapy sessions were working.

"Oh Percy, honey, you look so much better!" my mom sighed. See? Sleeping is good for you.

But I still felt like crap.

I walked up to my mother and hugged her around the waist tightly and spun her around in a circle, muttering apologies the whole time. I don't think I'd ever stop telling her how sorry I was.

"Stop apologizing." She whispered and her skin was so soft and I missed this so much over the years it didn't make any sense.

Nico was last. He kind of just stood there all awkwardly, looking at the ground and his hands, and fidgeting with the chains on his pants, staring at the lady behind the desk. She was around 35 and I knew she didn't have any kids or a boyfriend. More power to her I guess.

"Hey man." I said. I was wearing sweats and a wife beater because you didn't actually have to get dressed to do anything in the morning. You only had to brush your teeth and take a shower.

"You look like you're on vacation or something."

"I am." he laughed, but it was forced and I hated it, but I had no right to criticize, I was the one in a mental ward.

"How's the food in here?" he asked. Trust Nico to ask about food instead of my mental health. But it was refreshing, because I was tired of apologizing and talking about my feelings and crap.

"Horrible."

I showed them around the ward, my room, the cafeteria, group sessions room, my therapist's office, and even where I got to work with the secretary behind the desk. My mom looked worried, like she thought I was enjoying this experience a little too much, Rachel looked happy, and Nico looked like he was sitting in economics class again, too bored to blink. It made me feel relaxed for once.

My mom made me get dressed and take another shower and she took us all out for dinner. It was great. And Italian, so Nico ended up in some lengthy foreign conversation with the owner about… something. I didn't pick anything out of it. The only time I heard Nico speak Italian was when he was cursing.

"What the heck Nico?" Rachel sighed, once we were in the car. They were in the backseat, Nico's head was in her lap and they looked peaceful for once.

"What?" he said defensively.

"A whole 20 minute conversation? In a language we don't speak?"

"You think I wanted to sit there and talk to the guy? I hate strangers." Nico scoffed and I laughed, and for a second, everyone was silent and just stared at me in wonder. Like they never expected me to throw my head back and laugh like I used to.

"Holy crap." my mom giggled. Rachel turned and gave Nico a look and I laughed again, and then my mom was staring at me.

"What?" I sighed, exasperated.

"Sorry Perce, but… you seem so much more…happy?" Rachel tried and looked around to see if everyone agreed. Nico shrugged but my mom nodded her eager agreement and for a second I was happy because I'd made her happy.

I didn't feel like crap.


	11. Chapter 11

**Okay this chapter is all Nico's point of view, to show how things have been going at school since Percy left and stuff. Also, I've got a FictionPress now, under the name of Sweetest Nightmare1897 and I'm planning on putting up a story. You'll get the full summary on my profile, but it's called Teenagers. So…. check it out please..**

Chapter 10: Staying.

(Remember this is all Nico so no italics.)

I hate this.

Coming to school every single day and not having Percy here. I'm pretty sure he was the most fun, even when he was cracked and depressed and stuff. So… that's sad.

I've been hanging at Rachel's a lot lately, and that Luke kid is around a hell of a lot more often. We're usually up in her room planning the beach trip for when Percy should be used to being out of the hospital. We're planning on going all the way down to Florida and staying in this little town by the beach with a family run inn. It's way cheaper than going to a resort near Disney World, and I'm glad, because, even though I know Hades will pay for it, I don't want to have to ask him for a lot of money.

But, this Luke character. He's a creeper. Creepier than I'm rumored to be and that's saying something. He's got this weird scar running on his face and even though he's always happy go lucky and smiling he looks like he wants to kill the heck out of me, beat Octavian's ass and then rape Rachel or something. Then walk out of the house, steal their parents' cool Lexus and drive to California and steal someone's identity and kill a biker or something and then ditch town and watch as that guy, whose identity he stole, get arrested and bent over (repeatedly) in jail or something along those lines.

Like this one time:

"Rachel!" I shouted, as soon as I walked through her door. I had Hazel with me, who has a key, so I felt like a boss being able to walk into the house like I owned it.

"I'm coming!" she screamed. We were planning on having Riley over too, 1) to plan the trip 2) so I could stare at her for a while and 3) so she and Rachel could work on some abstract sculpture together.

"That's what she said." I mumbled and laughed under my breath.

"Good one." a voice suddenly said. I nearly jumped out of my skin, I was so startled. I did an automatic 360 of the foyer and I found Luke in their formal dining room, sitting with this wicked sharp knife, and sharpening it.

"Um… thanks." I said suspiciously. Hazel shuddered behind me and shoved her way into the house, grumbling about how I'm a sexist pig and I was damn heavy for being so skinny. I think, I didn't really catch it all.

"Is that your… girlfriend?" he asked. I walked into the room with him and stared at the knife for a moment. It was two different colors, and it looked deadly as hell.

"Nah, sister. She's adopted, don't tell her." I joked sarcastically, still staring at the knife.

"It's called Backbiter. It's supposed to be able to not only kill humans but also mythical creatures."

"Cool." I said suspiciously. This guy is seriously weird.

"Yeah, my mom's a serious Greek mythology buff."

"That's funny. My dad's name is Hades and his wife is Persephone."

"Insanity. That's such a weird coincidence. So you're like… the Ghost Prince." he laughed. But I didn't. That was Percy's weird nickname for me and he shouldn't know that considering I didn't think he'd ever met Percy.

Another time:

He was just sitting with Octavian, watching him as he cut open one of Rachel's old stuffed bunnies. I remember she'd called it Orry or something and she thought it was the coolest thing ever.

He laughed and laughed as the stuffing flew out of it and Octavian turned red with exhaustion like this was the most tiring thing he'd ever done.

Yeah, so Luke's a weirdo.

At school, a girl called Lea was telling me about how she knew him and she said that he told her that Percy was locked up in an insane asylum. Well, that's not entirely true, but I guess that's what she got out of the conversation. I wanted to ask how the hell she knew Luke Castellan considering he's a college student and his father was like the head dude in charge at the college so he was never really around us high schoolers.

Now everyone at school is talking about how Percy Jackson went totally bat shit crazy and got caught trying to saw his freaking arm off and is now currently residing in the local asylum. I tried, believe me, I tried to stop everyone from saying that, but I'm not that guy. I'm the kind to get into fights over the little things, but I can't do didly squat about the things that actually matter.

This dude's ruining my life, without even being a real part of it.

You try going to school and, after being the hottest thing since sliced freaking bread, go to having people call you and your brother and all your friends really weird, nut job, wackos and some other things that weren't nearly as nice as those. People have always suspected me of being suicidal. I found about 20 letters addressed to me with the suicide hotline number written on them. The guidance counselor keeps calling my freaking house, teachers are talking to me about… feelings and shit. Girls totally ignore me. Or avoid me, like the plague or a leper. And it's not fun. It' actually really sucks.

I've been, excommunicated or something.

I haven't seen Luke in a few days, but he's been showing up at Rachel's more and more and more.

Right now, it's lunch time, and all the people who used to want to sit with us actually went and got a life so they have their own friends and shit to sit with.

"This is fucking horrible. What the fuck is wrong with Castellan? Who the hell does he think he is?" I ranted at the table, picking at my lunch rather than eating it. Rachel rolled her eyes but Riley stared at me with big sad eyes.

"I know right? How did he even get this rumor around? He doesn't even go to this school, doesn't live in anyone's neighborhood… what in the world?" she sighed. She looked exhausted. People had been shoving her around lately, saying that she and Rachel had led Percy on after Annabeth left and he fell for one of them. I'll give teenagers this, they're pretty damn loyal to their Mr. Populars. Maybe I should've been nicer to them and we wouldn't be in this situation. But it's too late.

"This is bullshit." Travis agreed. He'd gotten into about 4 fights since Percy left. Super amounts of detention, near suspension, and it's only been like, 2 ½ weeks.

"I wish he was here." Hazel sighed. She's known him forever, and, though she'll never admit it, Percy's just as much her brother as I am. Frank was comforting her, and I was glad because I didn't have it in me. I wanted to strangle the shit out of someone. I wanted to bash their face in with my baseball bat and I'd laugh, I'd be happy about it.

"Hey di Angelo!" a voice shouted over the noise of the cafeteria. I rolled my eyes and turned around. It was Dex Hall. Basketball player or something, tall as hell, all muscle.

"What?" I said, putting on my bored face.

"So… I heard you've gotta get your wrists checked every day by the guidance counselor." he said, sitting down next to me, and shoving Conor away. Conor raised his eyebrows in shock, and I'm sure he was about to take a swing, but Travis held his arm back.

"I heard your girlfriend fucked Travis last month. What's your point?" I asked cheekily, not denying it. There was no point, it was true, and no one would believe me anyway.

"So is it true?"

"I don't know. Is it?"

"Shut the fuck up about Lisa di Angelo. I'm over it."

"I bet you are. I can tell by the way that vein is popping out in your neck." I shrugged sarcastically and he stood up. Pulling me by the collar.

I loved fights.

I never play fair either, I like fighting kinda dirty. It's pretty fun.

"Do you have something to say, di Angelo?"

"No. Do you, Hall?"

He swung at my face, and, because I'm ADHD, I jerked my head in the other direction. He swung again, and I moved again. Really easy if you ask me, he moves too slow for someone as awesome as I.

"Nico stop, sit down." Riley admonished. I looked over her, to wave her off, to tell her I would be fine, when Hall punched me in the nose, making my face jerk.

I looked up him and smiled. I could tell there was blood on my teeth and dripping onto my shirt. It was black, so no one would notice, except Persephone maybe. I saw fear flash in his eyes for a second.

I punched him in the face, and as soon as he jerked the other way, I elbowed him, making sure he was disoriented as he fell to the ground. I sat on top of him, grabbed his collar, head butted him.

"Stay the fuck away from my table, scrub." I whispered to him.

My nose was still gushing, and I knew head wounds always bled a lot, but hell, I was in pain.

"Shit Neeks. C'mon." Riley sighed. Rachel was busy staring at Dex's unconscious body, the twins were glaring at other people, and looking out for the principle, and Hazel had her face buried in Frank's neck, probably crying her eyes out.

I followed Riley out of the cafeteria. Her curly blonde hair was in a high ponytail but a few wisps escaped and framed her face perfectly.

She stopped by a water fountain and ran to the girls' bathroom.

"C'mon you idiot." she hissed at me.

There were three… 10th graders, I think, in there, doing their make up or something.

"Out." I growled, knowing how I looked, knowing my reputation. They scrambled away, looking at me with fear in their eyes, I smiled at their retreating backs, satisfied.

"You didn't have to do that." Riley said quietly, looking through her purse.

"I'm not supposed to be in here. They'd go tell or something." I shrugged.

"Not that. You didn't have to fight Dex. That was stupid. You could've just told him to screw off."

"But I didn't! So why the hell does it matter?" I groaned as she touched a wet napkin to my nose. I was probably just fractured, not broken, but it still hurt like a bitch.

"Sorry." she mumbled, and wiped more of the blood away. I'd stopped gushing, so most of the blood was dry and starting to stink like hell.

We stood in an awkward silence as she cleaned me up, offering me some tiny mouthwash to rise out all the blood. I kept a piece of napkin stuck up my nose for a while, as we stood there, and took it out when I was sure I wasn't bleeding anymore.

"Be right back." she mumbled and walked out. I watched her walk down the hall and stop at a vending machine. I heard something drop, and then she was walking back, looking like an angel.

I wished I had the balls to tell her. I can tell anyone anything. But I couldn't tell riley that I'd been in love with her for months on end already.

"Here, babe." she said and handed me two cans of Red Bull. But I couldn't focus… she'd called me babe. I mean, she does that all the time, but this time… it was different. She was looking me in the eyes, hers were all huge and blue, like the ocean or something and she made me forget how to breathe and it was freaking weird.

"Why two?" was my brilliant response. She rolled her eyes. Moment… ruined.

"One for your nose, the other to drink, maybe. You need a smoke?" she asked. Rachel, Hazel, Percy and Riley were the only ones who knew about my bad smoking habit. I tried not to, so I could keep in shape for baseball and stuff, but still, when I get stressed I get nervous if I don't have a cigarette.

I nodded quietly and took out my Newports, lighting one, and offering another to her. She smirked and shook her head no.

The first puff, amazing. I let out the smoke with one long shuddering breath.

Second puff. Awesome.

I finished the ciggie off after about 5 minutes.

We walked around the halls for a while, since lunch wasn't over, and I was scared to go back for fear the security guards and the principle, Mr. D, were all in the café. I downed my Red Bull, held the other one against my nose, and sighed at how great it felt.

"Thanks." I muttered. We were standing at her locker, and I was watching her profile as she picked her books for biology.

"No problem. I knew it was gonna happen soon anyway." she shrugged, no big deal.

"How?"

"Percy usually keeps you out of trouble. He's all nice and charismatic and shit. People listen to him." she shrugged again, making her perfume waft over to my nose. Again, no big deal. I'm not hyperventilating or anything.

She turned and looked at me suddenly, and something was in her eyes, it was incredible. I didn't know what to do.

But she kissed me. She pressed those warm, pink lips against my lips, and breathed in my gasp until she had a moan and we were nothing but electricity and warmth and I was a puddle of nothing.

She kissed me.

**How you like dem apples? I had so much fun writing this, I loved Nico. So much. Hope you enjoyed and everything. Check my profile and vote on that poll too. It's really important.**


	12. Chapter 12

Okay guys, everyone hates these things, myself included, but I have officially run out of prewritten chapters and my laptop is broken. I am using a pice of crap desktop that lacks Microsoft Word and the keyboard seriously sucks ass.

So, thank you for all your reviews, maybe read the story from the begining and give me concrit, instead of praise? That'd be great. I won't be updating for a while (Sad face) but when I do the chapter is going to be like 15 pages of awesome and perfection for all of my faithful reviewers who I didn't have to choke with virtual cookies and shit.

School starts for me on Friday, but I don't have any sports until Spring, and I have to walk a mile to school, so I'm pretty sure I'll stay healthy.

I'm really sorry guys, this has gotten such great reception for my first fanfic, and I'm working on my second and third already (By hand) so be prepared.

Do you think I should do a sequel? You guys don't know the end yet, but I do, and I don't think I should just leave you guys hanging.

Anyway, while I'm away, I'll try to use my school laptops and type up updates for you, but I do atually have to learn at school and such.

To Taffeh. A. Llama: You kick so much ass it's not even funny, keep up your awesomeness and I expect some extreme concrit from you!

To IAmABoss (Guest) If you are reading this, thanks soooooo much. You make me feel good (la la la la la)

To emthereble: The apples love you back.

To Tratie-Zutara-and-Perlia-Fan: I think it was sweet of her too! But I'm thinking of creating some awkwardness when a certain someone starts hitting on Nico. Can you guess who?

Again, thank you reviewers, and if you weren't mnetioned don't worry about it because I'm a crappy person anyway. Check out my profile, I rotate my polls, actually, and read my FictionPress Story, Teenagerz, it's lonely.

* * *

~~Have Sweet Nightmares Kids~~


	13. Chapter 13

**I'm just going to jump right into the chapter, even though I'm sure you guys want me to address where the hell I've been for like 2 months, I can't really say anything more than everyone I live with is really freaking technologically challenged because I'm not even typing this on Microsoft Word. This is WordPad, like a freaking sanitary napkin for words. I'm not on my goddamn period, so wtf? It may seem like I'm PMS-ing though. I'm only like this in my head, trust me, in real life I'm quite quiet and boring... so. On with the chapter. It's uber long, and it's a split between Percy and Nico and there's a lot of Luke mentions in this.**

**Oh, also, I was reading this amazayn (Yes, I'm a Directioner) fanfic called I Give It All, and it turned me into a total ApolloxPercy fangirl. I totally ship them now. So yeah.**

Chapter 11: Dark

I've had too much time to think in here. These people leaving me alone with all these thoughts definitely isn't good for society. I'll probably be released and end up burning down whole buildings and donating money to suicide bombers just on a random ass whim.

One thing that's been hanging over my head, is the reason why Dakota, my roommate, was cooped up in here. He's an alcoholic, I think I said that before, but he drinks so much because he wanted to feel powerful and loved.

Guys don't really talk about it, but yeah, we do want to be loved just as much as girls do. We want someone to at least seem like they care, at least fill our heads with some half way decent lies about how great we are, and lots of us don't get that. Dakota sure as hell didn't get that. Unless he was having drinking contests with his dad or showing off to his dad's friends how much he could drink or bragging at school about how carefree his life at home is. No one ever realized that this was becoming a problem, because people don't think of guys as having those types of problems. Guys don't cry or write in journals, and now I know why we never hear about guys who are depressed. They're all locked away in rehabs and psychiatric wards of hospitals because they don't know how to talk and hash things out like girls. I'm pretty sure if I'd just told Nico what the hell was wrong he wouldn've came up with some brilliant plan on how to make me feel better. Or he wouuld've told Rachel and she would've handled it. I didn't actually have to screw Bianca or start drinking or even get all hopped up on pain pills all the time. I could've just used my freaking voice.

So, what wold happen if guys did start hugging their best friends? What would happen if we publicly admitted to loving our best friend? What if we said that we needed someone to hug us? What if we were okay with crying and not just in dark movie theaters? What if guys were as strong as girls? Girls who put their neck on the line, starving themselves, wearing tons of makeup, spending money on new clothes, binging, ditching meaningful friends all in an attempt to be loved? I'm not saying those are good things to do, but what if guys had those ideas in their heads and all girls all over the world just wanted people to love them and everyone eventually figured out that the only way to survive is to atually be fucking nice and sweet and occaisionally, I don't know... honest? What if we all had the incredible breakthroughs that I did while in the hospital? What if that happened and everything wasn't so effing dark all the time and people actually understood each other? Would everything be perfect, or at least better, or would everything kinda fall to shit and become just lies, lies, and more lies for us to stand on.

That's a lot of questions.

I have no idea if even one of them will ever be answered, but they're all worth answering.

In group therapy, there's two girls, 4 guys, me, and the woman running the session called Miss Luna. Her name is legit Luna. Like... wtf?

Anyway, the two girls, Zoe and Calypso are best friends, and wicked cool. I mean, Zoe has this refined beauty that I didn't even know really existed. She's really funny and tough at the same time. Every once in a while you'll see just how scared she is though. Her father, an Army general, abused her while she was at home and she got arrested a lot of assult and such. She was brought here for attempted suicide. Calypso is almost the exact opposite. They kind of look alike, if you squint, but she's quiet and obviously beautiful. Petite but you can tell she's got some go, and she has a voice that just relaxes you like nothing else. She has social anxiety and was bullied severely. She's addicted to narcotics. We don't always get to see Caly because she often just sits in her room, trying to fight urges to burn herself and such. I feel really bad for her sometimes. She's so small. I mean, compared to this huge world, she's such a tiny girl. Tiny and breakable like porcelain. Everything is much too dark for her perfect pale skin and I really do wish I could protect her. I wish I could keep her safe from all those deep dark demons that don't live under her bed, but in her head and eat away at her. I wish, I wish, I wish she had someone other than Zoe to help her. I really do.

I've made friends with some of the guys. There's a guy called Zack who I think has a similar problem to mine. He's been diagnosed with BPD, while I haven't actually been diagnosed with anything yet, but he's cool. He's quiet but he's loud once he gets comfortable and he's into baseball. He's like a blonde Nico.

"Anything to share, Percy?" Miss Luna asked me. I was between Zoe and Zack. Zoe had snickered a little when she saw me turn red, but I was used to it. I didn't even care anymore.

I sat and thought for a moment.

I thought some more.

_What the hell are you doing here?_

"Why am I here?" I blurted. I got a lot of head turns, Calypso looked up slowly, like she was thinking the exact same thing and it was totally creeptsastic that I'd just said that.

"What?" Zack asked.

"I mean, what the fuck? If we all had just found something healthy to do, do you think we would be here? If I hadn't nearly hacked my hand off at the wrist, I bet I'd be in my room right now high as a kite and drunk as a skunk. Do you think that's the case with all of us? Do you think that had we not tried to off ourselves, would no one have cared?" I said. And as the words left my mouth I felt this overhwleming hate and guilt. Hate toawrds myself for thinking, for voicing, that I didn't think Nico or Rachel or my mom care. I felt it settle in my stomach and sit there. I waited for it to pass, I would've loved for it to pass, but that dark, sinking, terrible feeling just sat inside me and wrapped itself around my tongue, leaving me with the taste of vomit and Nyquil that I had taken the night before.

"I like to tell myself that someone would've found me. Not dead, but shattered and scarred and broken and all the dark in my chest would've been heated up like it was inside a microwave and it would've turned to light with a perfect toe popping kiss. I like to think that istead of feeling like nothing, I would've felt like everything, like the freest of all butterflies and like the slowest and most thoughtful of sloths. That's what I tell myself. That's what I tell myself when I ask 'Why the fuck am I here?'"

And as those words left her mouth after moments of sickly silence, I immediately felt them in my chest. The dark that was resting there definitly hadn't been thrown in the microwave yet, but I felt this tiny little bubble of hope. It lied in the small tear that fell from Zoe's eye and the little grin that was playing at Zack's lips. It was in the small tremor Caly's hand possessed, she'd never said anything so strongly. All the hope in the world had come from the tiny little voice called Calypso and I wanted to bottle it up and stick it on a shelf to light up a whole world.

To get me out of this dark.

_Nico POV_

_Ever since Riley kissed me in that bathroom, things have definitely changed between us. For one I'm always acting like this drooling, fawning idiot around her and it's becoming quite embarrassing. No one had mentioned it to us, though I'm sure Rachel and Hazel noticed Riley ditching them to come and hang with me in my attic when I'd gotten suspened for fighting._

_Luke has been creeping around. I don't know how in the hell he's doing it, but suddenly, mroe people hate me than last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. For some reason everyone has taken a shining to pikcing on me and have decided that I'm the wackjob that got Percy accused of being a wackjob and locked away in a psychiatric ward in the hospital._

_I guess you could say that he's a young politician._

_Maybe that's what he's studying while away at college, I don't know, but what ever it is, I'm about ready to shoot his professor for teacheing him so well._

_"Why is he so freaking concerned with the life of us lowly high schoolers anyway? Doesn't he have college girls to worry about? Does he not know he could go to jail?" I whined to Riley. Her blonde hair was up in a ponytail and she'd been up in my room for the past two and a half hours trying to like Slipknot. She claimed it was only because she was aware that one of the guys in the band dressed as a clown, and she was afraid of them._

_"Maybe he just really hates you." she shrugged._

_"Thanks." I said dryly and she giggled._

_"I'm sorry, but you know it's true."_

_"Still, it's irking the heck out of me. Not only do people find it funny to harrass me while I'm trying to enjoy a wholesom school lunch, but baseball players from other schools think it's cool to try and shove me at the games. Do you know how much damage I could do with a baseball bat?" I shouted incredulously. She said that I was really melodramatic, something she didn't know I had a penchant for until now._

_"Calm down Nico. It isn't that serious."_

_"Yeah... it is."_

_She'd kissed me on the corner of my lips and said everything was going to be fine, that I didn't need to worry about Luke plotting to ruin my last year of high school._

_But two weeks later, when I was walking to my car after a baseball game, in the dark, I worried. Becuase I ended up getting my face pounded in by two football players from Jordan High, and let me tell you, it wasn't fun havving nearly 500 pounds of sweat and and meat touching my skin. It made me want to rip someone's freaking face off._

_That's how my month has been without Percy._

_Pathetic, huh?_


	14. Chapter 14

**So, I'll just start this. I really don't have too much to say except for you to all please review. I need some inspiration I guess. I've got a terrible case of writer's block and it's just a totally suckish situation.**

**On with the chapter!**

Chapter 12: Islands

Calypso.

Caly.

Brown hair and deep eyes that couldn't decide if they were green or brown. She was this small picture of hope, of beauty, of inspiration, she was like the light at the end of a tunnel. A light that was fighting to stay bright, but it was there, and I wanted to find it, I wanted to touch it and breathe it in and keep it in my pocket forever so I would never have to be without it.

That's Calypso.

I don't know, it's just something that's inside of her. I don't think about wanting to fuck her or how good she would be at giving head, and I don't want to sit and drink or smoke with her. I want to run my fingers through her hair and watch Indie movies and eat Veggie Straws with her. I want to tickle her sides and I want to memorize her curves with the pads of my fingers until the prints are permanent on her skin. I want to breathe in the same air as her and I want to laugh at her jokes. I want to be able to hold her hair back when she throws up the medication she's on and I want to be able to get away with hiding the paper clip she's been using to cut. I want to be able to slip her a cigarette every once in a while, and maybe a shot of vodka, to take off some of her edge. I want her.

But we're islands apart.

"Percy!" she called. She'd obviously been calling me, trying to get my attention, for a while. We'd been in the room she shares with Zoe reading books and listening to A Fine Frenzy, and her head was resting on my thigh and I couldn't concentrate. I'd been reading the same paragraph, distracted by the way her long brown hair tangled over my leg and fell off the bed like some kind of chocolate fountain.

"Huh? Sorry Caly, got distracted." I mumbled, trying to get back to my book. I haven't got a clue what exactly it's about, and I sure didn't then. I just know that the main character's name was Jimmy.

"I see that. I was asking if you wanted food. You missed my whole monologue on meatball marinara sandwiches!" she sighed, her eyes wide and her bottom lip jutting out in a pout.

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's okay I guess. But really," she smirked at me, "You aren't hungry babe?"

Did you hear that?

She was always doing little things like that to drive me crazy. She'd kiss my fingers or wrap her arms around my neck or fall asleep on my shoulder or call me babe and my heart rate would drop and I'd feel like my lungs had just been just been cut open and all the air in my body was now in the room, and then she'd be able to hear everything I was thinking. She had this hold over me, so tight that I could barely function when she wasn't around, or if I didn't know exactly where she was.

"I am." I shrugged, flipping the page like I actually knew what had happened.

"What's wrong? It's been 47 minutes and you've just flipped the page." she asked, sitting up on her elbows. She brushed her long locks behind her ear and looked up at my through her thick lashes. Her pale skin had some color in it, it was warm in her room and she was rocking long sleeves. She refused to cut her hair, but she liked doing it to her skin. It made me nauseous to think about it, but I pushed the thought away and tried to concentrate on the sound her voice.

"Nothing. I'm just… worried."

"Percy…" her voice trailed off and she shook her head, a warning to not start it. She doesn't like to talk about it. She doesn't like to think about what happened before and what was happening then. She didn't like it when people could see the translucent scars on her arms and she didn't like it when they stared at the flecks of dried blood under her nails. Her marred skin was hers, and she never wanted to share. She said that if she was going to hurt, it would be by her own doing. She said that she wasn't suicidal and that she wished everyone would stop smothering her because we'd kill her before she could even get a goodbye note written and the belt around her neck.

"I'm sorry Caly. I can't just not think about it. We can't just pretend like I don't know, and that this is normal, that _we're_ normal, and that it's okay. I can't just watch you do that to yourself."

"Why? It's not like it hurts." She whispered. Her eyes were big and drowning, anad she seemed way too fragile to be sitting next to me.

"It hurts me."

"No it doesn't."

"It does Calypso."

"Why are you saying this? What happened? A second ago you couldn't even read and now you're about to cry over something that doesn't even affect you in any way. If I died, if I keeled over and died because of some pill that I swallowed, it wouldn't be a hard pill for you to swallow, would it? You'd go get a nurse, tell her you didn't know what happened, and you wouldn't want to know what happened. You walk away and get back to your fine ass emo friend and your rich mom and your great car and school, and swimming. You'd go home and drink some scotch and do some algebra homework like nothing happened. I don't even matter, Percy. Can you not see that? Zoe's parents admitted me here, not mine. They didn't even know I was a freaking addict. I'd been using that paper clip for weeks and you've only just found out. Maybe I was being obvious, or just not careful, but it doesn't matter because I don't matter. Drop it. You're not getting in my pants so stop pretending like you care and go find a fucking sandwich to choke on and die you son of a bitch." She snarled, quietly raging and exploding like and underwater earthquake too far from land for us to feel. She looked glassy now, see through and cracking. Tears were falling down her cheeks, angry tears. She truly believed I didn't care. She truly beloved that none of us caraed. The shock of it all hit me so hard, I couldn't move for a few seconds. My blood had gotten thick, too thick of me to function, my arms were lead.

"Calypso." I breathed brokenly. She couldn't even look at me, she was so disgusted.

I sucked in a deep pull of air, like I was going under for the butterfly, and slowly, much too slowly for my own tastes, I moved forward. My heart was in my throat as I lifted my hands. One to her chin, one to her cheeks. Her skin was hot and cold, from cry and from dying, but it felt right on my own skin. Her eyes were closed and she was crying and she looked like a painting I wanted to smear. I stopped breathing all together, my heart stopped beating, her heart stopped beating, molecules stopped moving, the music faded at the end of a song and my lips touched hers. Warm, and soft anad oh so sweet. They were Calypso's, they were chapped but they were perfect, I could taste blood on them and it was like a drink for the gods. It was Calypso.

I pulled away way too soon. Her eyes were still closed, but she drank in a deep breath and shuddered. Her shoulders shook, and once again, she looked up at me through those dark, thick lashes.

She smiled.

"We're miles apart Percy." She said, with a tiny grin.

"Like islands." I smiled, taking her and in mine and squeezing. Liquid lighting was still pouring through my veins and I was practically vibrating with excitement.

"Like islands." She laughed back.

That was yesterday. And this is today. Today, Nico is coming for a visit. It's been 21 days since I'd seen him last. Rachel had popped in and out, and so had my mother, but there had been no Nico. I heard he'd gotten into more fights in the past three weeks than he usually did in three months. I expect to see him with a cut lip and sunglasses hiding his black eye or something.

In a way, I'm afraid to see him. We haven't talked about me kissing him. We haven't talked about me banging his sister, hell, we hadn't even talked about what the hell I ate in the facility. I haven't mentioned Caly, and I don't know if I should, I don't know if we're an item, I don't know if I'm bi, I don't know what the hell is happening and it's scaring me. I'm scared. I'm scared and tense and Caly knows it. She's rubbing my shoulders and when the doors zip open, perfectly synced so you don't have to think, and reveal a Nico standing in front of me, she scampers off. She shoots a look over her shoulder, but doesn't say anything.

His baseball cap is pulled low and he looks like an inmate- I mean, a patient- himself. He has bags under his eyes, and the brown in them are almost black. He looks wild. He looks taller and skinnier and I'm almost afraid for him. I can see his headphones sticking out of his pockets and I can see a bruise that looks like fingers on his wrist.

"Percy!" he shouts. His voice is deep and scratchy, like it was after a baseball game. It's a Saturday, 3:30 p.m. meaning he probably had practice or something. He's wearing all black, as usual, and aside from his sickly appearance, I know he's happy to see me.

"Hey Neeks. What's up man?" I say hugging him. He pulls back and looks at me, his eyes traveling the length of my frame before looking me in the eyes and smiling brightly.

"Dude, me and Riles got together. Can you believe it?" he grinned. I could believe it, there was always sexual tension between those two, and I was glad that he was happy. I was glad we were alal figuring out how to be ourselves, I was glad we were all working and even though all of us seemed to be so far apart, I was closer to Rachel and my mom and probably even Paul than I had been in years.

That just really left Nico.

"I can. I knew you wanted her."

"Shut up." He chuckled, punching me in the arm. We walked towards the commons area, and I noticed a few of the nurses giving Nico weird looks, like they wanted to devour him. I could imagine all of the things running through their minds, which was thoroughly disturbing so I moved on in my train of thought.

We talked with Zack for a second, and he even did some meaningless flirting with Zoe, who in turn, naturally, punched him in the stomach and walked away laughing. I couldn't find Calypso anywhere, and while I wanted her to meet my best friend, I didn't want to end up blurting out the fact that yes, I did have this brief confused moment in time when I was head over heels in sort of love with him and yes, I did kiss him, and have sex with his sister in order to get his attention. So there was that.

We ended up alone, sprawled over the couches in the lounge, talking about school and Riley, mostly Riley, when he borught up the vacation he and Rachel had been planning. He said he wanted to go to the Keys, which sounded fantasatic and all, but I doubted I'd actually want to go anywhere without Caly. After the 8 weeks I was supposed to be spending in here, I wouldn't really be used to seeing different people everyday, and the noise at the school, and I wouldn't want to really change. I knew I'd have to but without Caly, it would seem unbearable.

"It's gonna be great man! All the margaritas you can drink, in moderation of course, plenty of hot girls to rub lotion on, beaches, drums, fucking tribal parties and shit. All for you." He smiled at me again from his couch. He looked excited, happy. I was out in another 3 ½ weeks, and then it was vacation time for 2 weeks. Without Calypso.

"Yeah, of course. Who we bringing?"

"You, duh, me, also duh, Riley, Rachel, Hazel, maybe Frank, maybe the twins." He shrugged. I nodded. Normaally I would've been psyched, but after kissing Calypso once, I wanted to do it again. And I'd want to do it again and again and again and again while on vacation.

"Cool."

"You got someone you wanna bring? That Zack kid?"

"Actually," I started, looking away from him, "I've got a girl I wanna take." I tried to stay nonchalant, but it was tough. What if Nico didn't like her, what if they didn't get along? What if she was done with me by the time we were released? What if she just didn't want to go?

"A girl?" he looked up.

"Yeah, her name's Calypso."

"Like the girl on the island?"

"Yeah. Like the girl on the island."

**I'm kinda proud of this chapter. I like it, it's romantic. I guess the next chapter will have some Nico. I'm getting more comfortable writing in his POV. Review please!**


	15. Chapter 15

**So right now, I know you were all expecting to see an actual update, and I'm incredibly sorry to that I got your hopes up. Plus, this is like the 2nd or 3rd author's note that I've typed out to you guys, and it's making me a little sad. I just don't know what to do with this story. I have my plot line, but I don't actually know how to carry it out. The chapters are getting shorter, and few and far between. During the summer I'd type about 3 chapters a night, 5-6 pages each and now you guys are lucky to get a measly paragraph :( I basically sit around and listen to music and try to inspire myself (I'm currently listening to One Direction) and it isn't working. Should I hand this off to one of you guys? I could just give pointers, or you guys could tell me what to do. I don't know. I just can't think of anything dramatic to happen. I've got all these ideas and I don't know how to really use them. This is supposed to be a really long fic and I'm stuck on chapter freaking 13! So yeah... depression. This is going to be suuuuuuuper short.**

Chapter 13: Calypso

(This is all her POV)

I saw him talking to his friend, the baseball player. I watched the way he watched him and I watched the way the lady behind the front desk watched him. It seems the whole world has an intense infatuation with him and it's incredibly confusing. He seems completely average. Normal. Mundane. Everyday. Insignificant. Irrelevant. All these words flood my mind when I look at this kid and I can't fathom what in hell would make Percy so nervous around him. It's almost annoying.

Percy's green eyes track his every move. He's wearing all black and his skin is pale and he's thin and he seems kind of sick. His name is Nico. He's kind of cute, but he's definitely not my type and he seems totally and completely aloof to others' reactions to him. He can't see how much Percy adores him. I'm sure he's on some kind of pedestal in Percy's mind and again; it's unnerving.

They go back to Percy's room and I want to follow them and maybe introduce myself, show that there is an actual person that Percy adores more than him. But I'm afraid. I'm afraid that this kid'll just look at me and shoot me down and tell Percy I'm not worth it and those sea green eyes will shatter, and Percy will just along with it. I don't want it to happen. I don't want another person to leave me.

I'm not sure how I feel about Percy.

And I sit and contemplate this as I wait for Nico to finally leave.

I like the way his hair is messy and he's really cute, in a scruffy skater boy kind of way. You can tell he's not clean cut, but he's not too bad. Maybe a little bit of a trouble maker, but no girl, I'm sure, could resist his eyes and his smile. And when he laughs... god when he laughs, it's incredible. I wanna go all cliche and say he lights up my world (Like nobody else) and that I'd follow him just about anywhere. But I can't because he does make me a little nervous. He's a wild card. A live wire. He's one of those people that need constant affection, and I don't know if I can do that. What if he's all down and in the dumps and I just can't handle it? Then I'm no better than his old girlfriend and he'll end up in another rehabilitation center and I don't want to do that to him. But can I stay away from him?

I return to my room more confused than ever.


	16. Chapter 16

**So I've figured out how to get this story going… TIME SKIP! It's only a couple of weeks, so don't worry. But, I'm listening to Death Cab right now, meaning this is going to be some deep shit. Also, if you're into Max Ride, I advise you go check out Playing With Fire, I think it's in my favorites. It's amazing, and the newest chapter is literally Alex's best work. I'm proud of her :)**

**Anyway, this may be confusing. Every line is a time skip. Think… two or three days to a week (Except in Nico's, it's like... 30 minutes maybe) Because I'm trying to portray the fact that things are getting better. Cause they are!**

Chapter 14: In the Now

It's been a week since I've been released.

I think, when I left the building, I finally realized just how big the world was. I'd always thought of New York, being the biggest city in the U.S, as one of the biggest accomplishments… ever. I thought that if I could survive Manhattan, with all its inflated prices, mean people, and disgusting streets, I could hold my own anywhere I ever went.

But that was before I'd ever sat and listened to the madness that was in my head.

It was like the craziest track of screamo, jazz, and classical music all combined and thrown on to amuse itself. It's like listening to your mother sing to you at night, and watching her cry. It's literally, listening to the sun rise and the moon fall out of the sky.

Your mind can be a scary, even terrifying place, but it's all in where you chose to go.

Your mind is a lot like the world.

My mind, right about now, is more like the Underworld.

I mean, everyone has those moments, when they don't feel too good, so they throw on some music, and immediately, their heart is a warm place again. But with me… I've realized that every once in a while, the little home where I kept my memory of Annabeth and everything else that is happy, it going to burn down. It's going to burn, and rot, and wash away, and it's nobody's job but my own to rebuild it.

I've also realized that Annabeth doesn't have to be the bane of my existence. She doesn't have to be this bittersweet, beautiful work of art hanging in the hallways of my mind. She doesn't have to be the subject of every angry, drunken night, she doesn't have to be what my life revolves around anymore, because I'm not what _her_ life revolves around. She's moved on, and I should be able to do so too, y'know?

Because I deserve happiness.

If there's one thing I deserve- anyone deserves- it's a life full of beauty and happiness and warmth.

I guess, what I'm trying to tell you, is that I've made a full recovery by now. I still have the urges, and every so often, when I'm alone, I'll use that little lighter in my car and let the heat devour away every toxic, evil thing that's running through my mind. It's not the best coping mechanism, I know, but it's all I've got right now. I want to be the same person, the same Percy, and that's all I've got for the time being.

And then there's school.

I haven't actually gone back yet, and I'm glad. Nico's been telling me about all the fights he's been in, all the confrontations with Luke he's had, and while he isn't very good with the details of it, I'm still glad to hear about it. I've always been kind of… in charge, I guess, looked up to- more so- at school, and I know when I get back, all the idiots retarded enough to fuck with Nico are going to calm down. We've always been a dynamic duo, and it's good to be back in business.

Rachel has been telling me all about her new boyfriend, a boy whose name she refuses to divulge, but I'm happy for her. She'd been really stressed out, so stressed, in fact, that Riley and Hazel couldn't even get her to go to an art gallery. She stuck to being anti-social and fanfictioning 24/7a, and I'm thrilled she's come out of her shell again.

This sounds like the end of a story, really it does, and in a way… it kind of is.

I'm changing I can feel it.

* * *

"It's going to be absolutely brilliant Perce, and you're going." Nico smirked at me from my bedroom floor. I'm over that crush I had on him. It was weird, and I feel as though I just needed the conflict, I needed the attention, and he definitely gave it to me. I haven't talked to Bianca in a while, and I have a feeling the next time I see her it's going to be awkward because-

"And so is Caly." I said smartly. Since getting out (I make it sound like prison) I've been calling and visiting Calypso almost every day. I'm quite obsessed with her.

"I've never even met this girl, she could be a total mental patient."

"She technically is."

"Shut up, you know what I mean."

"Nico that's offensive." I said in mock seriousness. We both laughed, happiness filling the air in short breaths.

* * *

"Hey babe." I smiled down at her. She's still the most beautiful thing, she literally lights up my world, and it's so corny… I'm quoting One Direction. I can't believe that I thought they were gay before, because just about every song (especially on Take Me Home), that they've ever made is incredibly true. I've tried to deny it, many times, and I'd still get caught singing Truly Madly Deeply or Heart Attack.

"Hiya." She smirks, the look, the quirk of it playing at her soft, shy lips. It's times like these that make me realize that I don't ever want to let her go. It's time like these that make me realize that no one will ever know- literally, ever- how much she means to me. No one will ever get to feel what I feel when Calypso wraps her tiny fingers around my big ones. No one will ever know how… dizzy I get when her grown up perfume is wafting over to me when she's fresh out of the shower. No one will ever know how heavy anad laden my heart feels when tears roll down her soft cheeks.

And it's crazy.

But I like it.

I like knowing that I've never felt this way, and she's never felt this way, and no one on Earth will ever feel the way we do when out lips move in sync, or when her bare skin just barely brushes against mine. Or when her breath mixes with my sweat on the nights when we need to feel each other, if we're going to feel anything. She's my new coping mechanism.

* * *

"I can't even put into words how much this means to me. I couldn't have ever gotten here, really, if it weren't for everyone in my life who has ever supported me. From my husband, to my girlfriends back at Sweet on America, to my special little boy, Percy. Thank you so much. I love you all." My mom said. Her big blue eyes were watery, and her brown hair was falling in chocolaty waves down her back. She looked like a naiad, one of those pretty girls who live under the sea. And as she held the beautiful silvery award in her hand, beaming down at me from the stage, I become conscious of the fact that she loved me. She loved me, and I was her baby, and she would never forget me. Even with that small bump growing in her belly.

I laughed, a giddy, gone with the wind, wild sound, as applause filled my ears and her smile filled my eyes.

* * *

_Now_

"I'm actually going to miss you Paul." I chuckle as he pats me on the shoulder. It's been a month, and I haven't even _seen_ the inside of my school. I'm glad to not have the stress of homework and jerkass football players and flirting sluts and just the general irate feeling I get around teachers. Of course I've felt a little bad for leaving Nico to deal with it all, but he's tough. Plus… we're finally vacationing.

* * *

_(Remember, italics is Nico!)_

_He's been out for a while now. And it's been absolutely amazing! He looks like a normal human fucking being and he's laughing. It isn't forced, and he isn't stoic. He's alive, and he's got a girl, and he isn't drinking, and I'm not worrying, and I'm sleeping and Riley…_

_Well Riley's a real housewife._

_We kiss, and we hug, and we share secret smiles, and giggles. Yes, me, Nico di Angelo, giggling. She helps me with homework, and I help with hers and she shows up to baseball games, and I show up to her poetry readings and give opinions on the school's newspaper, even though I didn't even care 3 months ago._

_"__This is going to be… orgasmic." Riley breathes. Her voice is as wispy as her hair, and all of her poetic words have started rubbing off on me, so please excuse the ladylike-ness._

_"__Getting a bit ahead of ourselves, are we?" I ask cockily. She's riding shotgun, and Hazel's sitting in the back, pretending to gag. I laugh. I'm sure Riley's right, but we don't need to talk about it in front of the children._

_"__Shut up and drive," she mutters, and then suddenly slaps my hand away from the volume control, "Without screeching buffoons please." She sighs. Slipknot has yet to grow on her, though I am still diligently trying to convert her._

_"__Whatever babe. You can just sing for me." I look over at her, giving her the good old puppy eyes. Did you know poetry can be songs also? And Riley's got a beautiful voice, breathy, a little panicked you could say, and raspy and just all together heartfelt and sexy. __**(Think Jillian Jensen if you've watched X Factor USA)**_

_And she sings until we reach the airport. She sings about birds and she sings about sadness and she sings about the string in her heart, the beat of her heart, and everything she says make me feel completely spellbound, because Slipknot can't do that._

* * *

_As we pull up, I see Sally and Paul walking out. I don't smile or wave, but riley does so enthusiastically, making up for my general anti-social ways towards people. I know Sally doesn't mind, she's used to it, but Paul sometimes feels a little offended by it. Not that I care… pfft._

_I park my truck, texting the twins, who aren't coming, to tell them they can come get my truck. I just hope that they don't drive her off into the East River._

_Riley jumps on my back as I'm grabbing luggage, and I hand her both of our carry-ons. Hazel is surprisingly quiet grabbing her own things, maybe because Frank didn't show up to wish her farewell, but I know by the time we're on the plane, she won't even care._

_We walk into the airport, getting strange stares, but it's okay, I'm actually enjoying it, smirking at guys, scowling at guys, smiling at little kids and adults. I think my happiness and excitement is obvious, tangible in the air even._

_I feel light. I feel like air._

_And when I see Percy, when I feel Hazel squeeze my hand, hear Rachel's squeal of joy, and taste the delicious lips of my princess on mine… I feel like time. Steady, constant, strong._

**I hope you all liked it. I'm tearing up, so I'm gonna stop this chapter….**


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